by Nisioisin
001
I suppose I need to get around to talking about Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade. I probably have a duty to do so. During the spring break between my second and third years as a high school student─I met her. It was a shocking meeting, and it was a catastrophic one. In any case, I must have had terrible luck─of course, in the same way that I was unable to avoid that bad luck, even if I somehow had, I doubt someone else would have met that fate. It actually seems extremely irresponsible to talk about my bad luck here. Maybe I should just be upfront and say that it was my fault. In the end, I think it was a chain of events only made possible because I was me.
A chain of events.
Actually, while I used those words just now without giving them any particular thought, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what events bookend this chain. Where this incident began, what path it took, or how it ended─I can’t declare the precise truth of the matter. It could be that it has yet to end, even now, or perhaps it hasn’t even started. And I say that not as a form of pretention or wordplay; that is what I honestly believe.
Ultimately, I can only observe the incident from my own perspective, so I will never be able to know what that chain of events truly meant to anyone else─or what it didn’t mean. Asking “them” may allow me to come to some degree of understanding of the circumstances, but even then, there’s no way for me to know if their words are true.
What I have is not the truth, but an understanding.
And perhaps that’s enough.
But to begin with (and this is the one thing I can say definitively), such is the nature of the girl at the center of this all─Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.
Someone who only holds meaning for the observer.
Someone whose meaning changes depending on the observer.
Someone whose meaning cannot be agreed upon by her observers.
A vampire.
Of course, I probably don’t need to give you a detailed explanation of what a vampire is. Whether in comics, movies, or games, that is a vein long since mined dry. The majority of Japanese people must be closely familiar with them, even though they aren’t creatures born from the culture of this country. You might call them a bit of an old notion.
Still, spring break.
I was attacked by a vampire, one of these notions we now consider dated twice over.
You could say it was stupid.
In fact, I think I was stupid.
And it was due to the stupidity of none but yours truly that I ended up experiencing two weeks of hell─a hell that took up the entire stretch of spring break, end to end.
If it was one big joke, it sure felt like hell; if it was hell, it sure felt like one big joke.
Like I said earlier, it will forever be a mystery to me when this chain of events began, where and how it transpired, and in what manner it ended. But while that may be an unsolvable dilemma, I am absolutely certain of when my own personal hell began and when it ended.
March 26th to April 7th.
Spring break.
I would come to learn that creatures such as her─Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade─are known as “aberrations.”
Aberrations.
Monsters.
Inhumans.
In that case, the one thing above all others that caused me to experience hell was the fact that I observed her─at that moment, at that location, in that fashion.
I was a woefully unsuitable observer.
And yes, a stupid one.
While telling you about her would, by necessity, entail fully exposing my own stupidity─an act you may see as masochistic─I do think I have to talk about that vampire.
About the story of the wound I received from her.
About the story of how I wounded her.
I have to talk about it.
I have a duty to speak.
That is my responsibility.
…This preamble has gotten quite long, but I’d like to ask for your understanding here─though I’ve pompously gone on about responsibility and whatnot, it’s merely the responsibility of a stupid jester. There’s no telling when I’ll founder─while it’s a timid thing to say, I honestly do not have the confidence to finish telling this story. That is why I’ve been dragging out these proper-like preliminary remarks.
Even so, I couldn’t possibly go any longer. And after I finally begin the story, it could become like a rock rolling down a hill so that it’ll be harder to stop. But to be sure, just in case it turns out that I lack the resolve, allow me to divulge how it ends here in advance.
This story about a vampire has an unhappy ending.
It concludes with everyone becoming miserable.
And that’s just the hell’s ending. The chain of events may not yet be over, and in any case, my responsibility to her will be a lifelong affair.
002
Making friends would lower my intensity as a human.
I think I said something of the sort.
As to when, it was right before spring break: Saturday, March 25th, in the afternoon of the day our school held its closing ceremony. I was wandering around aimlessly near the school I go to, Naoetsu High.
We’re talking about me, who has zero affiliation with any school club.
I really was just wandering around, for no reason whatsoever.
If you’re wondering if I was thrilled that spring break would start the next day, I was by no means excited.
As a rule, students are happy about any cluster of days off. Not just spring break, but summer break, winter break, Golden Week, and so on. Even I was happy for the most part that our third trimester was over and that spring break had begun, but at the same time, long vacations also meant having far more time on my hands than I knew what to do with.
Especially spring break, since we don’t even have homework.
Staying at home would feel a bit odd.
Anyway─with closing ceremonies over, I went to my classroom to receive my report card, and we were dismissed with an okay, see you next school year, but I hesitated to go straight home. Yet it wasn’t as if I had anywhere else to go, which meant loitering around school like some sort of suspicious fellow.
I had no particular goal.
I did it less to fill time than to kill time.
While I bike to school, my bicycle was actually still parked in the school lot─another expression of my intention to not go home yet.
You could say I was going for a walk.
Of course, I’m not the health-conscious type.
While it may have seemed like a good idea to kill time inside school if killing time is what I wanted to do, just as I found being at home odd, in its own way it was odd being at school too─though it may have been the afternoon after closing ceremonies, a lot of people were in the middle of their club activities.
I don’t like people who try hard.
Well, it’s not like the students at my school are that enthusiastic about their clubs. The only real exception was the girls’ basketball team after this monstrously huge rookie joined as the result of some sort of mistake. Most of the other clubs, even the sports teams, were the kinds of outfits that were actually happy to receive participation trophies.
And that’s why (well, there’s not any actual reason why) after aimlessly circling around the school a few times, I had begun to think that yeah, it really is about time for me to pick up my bike from inside the school and head home─I’m hungry, after all─when I came across an unexpected individual.
With it already being spring break, I frankly don’t know whether to describe myself at that time as a second-year or a third-year, but in any case, a celebrity in my grade─Tsubasa Hanekawa─was walking straight toward me.
I wondered for a moment what
she was doing, with both of her hands held there behind her head, until I realized she seemed to be adjusting the position of her braid. She wore her long hair behind her in a braid. While braids themselves are already rare to begin with these days, she also wore her bangs in a straight line.
She was wearing her school uniform.
A completely unaltered skirt falling four inches below her knees.
A black scarf.
A school sweater on top of her blouse as designated by school regulations.
White socks and school shoes as designated by those same regulations.
The very picture of a model student.
A model student among model students, a class president among class presidents.
She and I were in different classes during both our first and second years, so I doubted she knew who I was, but I had heard about her class-presidential ways and doings.
Since the rumors had gone so far to find their way to me, someone grossly ignorant of school gossip, even taken with a grain of salt those ways and doings must have been quite something.
She would no doubt continue to be class president as a third-year.
Plus, she had good grades.
While it’s an odd way to put it, I’d heard that she was freakishly smart. Getting perfect marks in all of her classes was like nothing to her. Sure, when all the students take the same test, someone ending up in first place is as much of a given as someone else ending up in last place, but for two years, Tsubasa Hanekawa had always maintained her spot on top.
Though I had managed to get into a private prep school, Naoetsu High, I soon found myself in a position that you might call “left behind,” which meant there was a world of difference between us. In a way, you could call us polar opposites.
Hmph.
And so, she caught my attention for a moment.
We were in different classes, after all, so while I may have known of her, I rarely saw her─yet it was her who I happened to see at that moment, right after closing ceremonies had ended, and that did surprise me a little.
Well.
A rare coincidence, that’s all.
She seemed to have just left through the school gates, so upon further consideration, it wasn’t that strange to come across her, considering how I’d been loitering around the school for all that time.
Naturally, Hanekawa didn’t even notice me.
I didn’t seem to be in her field of vision, as engrossed as she was in fixing the position of her braid─and had I happened to be in it, Hanekawa and I wouldn’t normally so much as nod at each other, given our relationship (or lack therof).
Hah hah hah.
In fact, I thought that a model student like Hanekawa probably hated people with the kind of devil-may-care attitude that I had.
She was serious, and I was not.
Better if she didn’t know about me.
I’ll just let her pass by, I thought.
No reason to run away, either.
I kept walking forward, not missing a step, as if I hadn’t noticed her─and right as we were only five or so steps away each from passing by without incident, it happened.
I…doubt I’ll ever forget that moment as long as I live.
Out of absolutely nowhere─a gust of wind.
“Ah.”
I hadn’t been able to stay silent despite myself.
The front of Hanekawa’s rather long pleated skirt, hanging four inches below her knees, flew straight up in the air.
I assume that under different circumstances, she would have reflexively pushed it back down into place─but thanks to some unfortunate timing, both of her hands were behind her head, engrossed in the complex operation that was fixing the position of her braid. From where I stood, she almost looked like she was putting on a mildly affected pose, her hands clasped behind her.
And it was in that situation that her skirt was flipped up.
Its contents were put into plain sight.
They were certainly not gaudy─but they were the kind of elegant undergarments that refused to release one’s gaze once a pair of eyes was attracted to them.
They were a tidy and pure white.
It was not as if they were suggestively shaped. In fact, they seemed to be on the higher end of the surface area spectrum. A wide article, made of thick cloth─by no means lascivious, and in fact, if one were to speak of them in that way, it would be reasonable to call them demure.
Yet they were so white it was dazzling.
And they were anything but plain.
In the center, white string had been used to sew a complex embroidered pattern over a white canvas─no doubt intended to evoke flowers. The pattern, with its bilateral symmetry, acted to bring a sublime balance to the piece as a whole. And toward the top-center of the embroidery sat a small ribbon.
This one ribbon worked to further cement the impression of the whole.
What’s more, visible just above that small ribbon was her abdomen and her cute bellybutton. Yes, her skirt had been flipped so far up that those parts of her were now immodestly exposed. Had I wanted to, I could even have scrutinized the tails of her blouse, tucked into her skirt. I never knew that the shirttails of a blouse could appear so salacious.
The lining of a skirt was another fresh sight to my eyes. While I frequently caught sight of skirts, they seemed to be inviolable, mysterious existences─but I now felt as though, for the very first time, I understood the structure of this garment.
But most of all, it was exquisite how only the front section of her skirt was flipped.
Next to her pure-white undergarment stood something else so proudly white it was as if the two were in competition: her thighs, which had no small amount of meat on them. Sitting behind the two, her navy blue skirt placed them in relief and emphasized the contrast. You could say her skirt, longer than the average girl’s, was now serving like a blackout curtain to accentuate a graceful work of fine art. Even the skirt’s pleats came across like they might be made of a fine velvet.
And when coupled with that pose of hers, her hands joined behind her head, it practically seemed as if she was showing off her vaunted underwear to me. That was how she appeared in effect.
She─Tsubasa Hanekawa, did not move so much as a finger.
She must have been taken aback.
She stood in that pose, allowing her skirt to stay flipped, with everything down to her expression frozen in place.
In reality, I doubt that a solitary second went by.
But for me, it was like an hour─no, it felt so long I even began to imagine that my life might reach its natural end before this glimpse was over. This is absolutely not an exaggeration. In that moment, I experienced a lifetime.
My eyes were so captivated by her lower half that I felt as though my eyes were about to grow dry.
Of course, I understand─the gentlemanly thing to do in this kind of situation is to avert your eyes.
Of course I understand that.
In most cases, I probably would have done so. I even try my best to look down at my feet the entire while if a girl happens to be in front of me when I climb the stairs.
But at that moment in time, I was not so polished a man that I could promptly behave in said manner, utterly unprepared, upon being visited by such a blessing out of the blue.
It was like that image of Hanekawa was being burned into my retinas.
If I were to die at that moment and if my eyes were transplanted to another person, that someone would probably be haunted by visions of Hanekawa’s underwear for life.
That is how shocking it was.
The underwear of a model student.
“………”
Hold on.
How long did I just go on describing a model student’s panties?
While I did return to my senses, by the time I did, Hanekawa’s skirt was already back in place.
It really had been an instant.
As for Hanekawa─she still looked taken aback. And she was
looking at me.
She was staring at me.
“…Um.”
Ack.
How was I to respond?
What was I supposed to do at a time like this?
“I…didn’t see anything, you know?”
I tried a bald-faced lie.
But my bald-faced lie received no reply from Hanekawa. She only continued to stare at me as she finally finished adjusting her braid and brought her hands down to pat her skirt a few times.
