by Nisioisin
“You need to remember what words mean, Araragi.”
“Y-Yeah… You really do know everything, don’t you?”
“Not everything. I just know what I know.”
“Ah.”
Letting slip words pregnant with meaning as if it were the most natural thing, eh?
She wasn’t a class president among class presidents for nothing.
…When I stopped to think about it, we were neither second years nor third years during spring break, so Hanekawa wasn’t really a “class president”…but why split hairs.
She felt like a class president.
“Anyway, who cares what I studied,” I said. “Every day is a new lesson for all of us.”
“Hm? That’s a pretty good one.”
“So let’s think about something more constructive. Like how to make society a better place.”
“You’re right,” Hanekawa said, taking my makeshift excuse seriously. “Okay, what might we do to get rid of bullying?”
“……”
Like I’d know!
This was supposed to be small talk─spare me the heavy stuff!
She’d toss that at me without any sort of advance prep?!
“I know it’s heavy, heavy stuff, but Araragi, we’ve got to start somewhere. Like they say, Lourdes wasn’t built in a day.”
“You mean Rome wasn’t─”
Wait…didn’t “lourdes” also mean “heavy” in French?
A clever one, wasn’t she? She ad-libbed that?
“………Um, for starters, placing security cameras throughout a school should get rid of outright bullying at least?”
It wouldn’t address the cause, but it’d surely wipe out the effect.
“Hmm. It’s not bad as an idea, but there’s still the issue of privacy. What about the locker rooms?”
“Guh.”
She’d pointed out a major flaw in my plan.
People do get bullied in locker rooms. In fact, private spaces pose the highest risk.
“…Okay, I got it. As the person who came up with the idea, I’ll take responsibility for checking the videos of the girls’ locker room.”
“What’s ‘okay’ about that?”
Miss Hanekawa shook her head in earnest with a teacherly expression. I’d misspoken big time.
“And anyway, I wasn’t really talking about the girls’ locker room, was I?”
“Yikes!”
I panicked. Hanekawa continued to look at me, decidedly unimpressed.
“You’d peep, Araragi?”
“No, wait, I got it! I’ll let you check the videos of the boys’ lock-er room, so just pretend that I never said that!”
“No, thank you!”
…Wait.
That wasn’t what was important here. I had to hurry up and get away from Hanekawa─I couldn’t stand Dramaturgy up. And I couldn’t get her involved.
“Hey, Hanekawa… Why don’t you head home already? I was about to do the same, anyway.”
“Hmm? Well, you don’t have to tell me. That was my plan to begin with.”
“Do you live around here?”
“Nope. I was on a walk and ended up here.”
“…You shouldn’t wander around at night,” I said. “You might run into a vampire, you know?”
It was meant as a self-deprecating, ironic remark, but it wounded me far more than I was ready for. I didn’t expect my own words to be so cutting, but on top of that─
“Actually, I was kind of hoping I would,” Hanekawa said, almost playfully, as I thought that. “I guess it’s only a rumor─but I was thinking I just might get to meet a vampire.”
“Why?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Why would you want to meet a damn vampire?”
“Oh, I don’t have anything particular in mind. I’m at that age where you hanker after something out of the ordinary, that’s all. I thought I’d meet a vampire, then have a little chat─”
“Bullshit!”
And like that, without even meaning to─I yelled at her.
Oops, I thought. I messed up.
“Huh… Hmm?” With a confused, vague smile on her face, Hanekawa hurried to say, “S-Sorry. I-It seems like I touched a nerve there.”
“……”
It would have been easy to say, Not at all.
It probably would have been easy. But─I didn’t.
Honestly, I was surprised; it wasn’t Hanekawa who was confused, but me.
I’d thought I’d come to accept my situation and was keeping my cool as I dealt with it.
“It” being the fact that I’d become a vampire.
The fact that I was out to collect Kissshot’s limbs.
I could become human again if I did that.
It was simple to understand, and simple to accept. Or so I’d thought.
No part of me regretted saving Kissshot from the verge of death─even in spite of my predicament, I could confidently say so.
Yet─a few little words from Hanekawa had rattled me.
When was the last time I’d yelled at someone outside of my family?
Oh, boy…
So my intensity as a human was still at an all-time low.
Well─I wasn’t even human anymore.
And yet. Or rather, that was why.
Precisely why.
“…No,” I shook my head.
Instead of apologizing back to her, I swallowed my words.
“You’re the one who gets on my nerve,” I continued instead.
“What?”
“You piss me off. I’m sick and tired of you.”
As Hanekawa stood there, still with her vague smile as if she hadn’t taken my meaning, I started hurling at her the most lacerating words I could think of.
It felt like abusing a kitten. In other words, it couldn’t have felt worse.
But I had to say them.
“I’m alone because I want to be alone. Stop following me.”
“Wait, A-Araragi? Why are you saying these things all of a sudden? Weren’t we having fun talking until just a second ago?”
“It wasn’t fun for me at all,” I said, doing my best to strangle my emotions. “I was pretending.”
“That’s─”
“I was only after your fortune.”
“M-My family isn’t that rich, you know?!”
Ack. I hadn’t meant to crack a joke.
I regrouped.
“…I don’t know if this is some way for you to get good letters of recommendation, but what’s a model student like you doing talking to a washout like me? You might enjoy whatever feelings of superiority you get from this, but I can’t bear you standing there and feeling sorry for me.”
“……”
Hanekawa’s face went blank. But I couldn’t falter. I had to keep going.
I took my phone out of my pocket and pointed it at Hanekawa. “And don’t mess with people’s phones without their permission.”
I made sure she could see my phone as I deleted Tsubasa Hanekawa’s name, number, and email address.
“…So get out of my face.”
Sst.
Hanekawa closed her eyes after I said that to her.
I wondered if she was going to cry. I hadn’t made a girl cry since elementary school.
That’s what I thought.
But rather than cry, she opened her eyes and smiled─though it was a weak smile.
Even at this stage?
“All right,” she said. “Sorry you had to say all of that to make me go away.”
Then, Hanekawa turned her back to me and ran off, leaving me behind.
Sorry?
Did she just apologize there at the end? After everything I’d said to her? Honestly, I had managed to blacken my own mood saying all those things─how was she able to smile at me like that?
…It was obvious why.
She wasn’t like me. She was a really cool person.
I had to quickly part ways with Hanekawa before going to the agreed-upon lo
cation─I couldn’t allow a regular person like her to get involved. That, of course, had been going through my head.
But far more than that, it seemed like I had vented my anger on her. Armed with a host of justifications, I’d taken things out on her.
She wanted to meet a vampire.
I had vented my anger on her for innocently saying so, when it was clear she didn’t mean ill.
Maybe I was actually regretting it? Helping Kissshot?
Maybe I actually hated it? Having to get back Kissshot’s limbs? Having to endanger my own person to do it?
And there was one more thing─which truly scared me.
Did I…
Did I really want to return to being human?
I found myself in a living hell if I went out in the sun.
There were lots of other restrictions, too.
But─was I sure that I didn’t long to be a vampire, an existence greater than any human, closing my eyes to those details?
In the end.
I had to be feeling nervous.
In that case, it was good that I hadn’t simply parted ways with Hanekawa─it was good that I’d cut ties with her.
No, the two of us had probably yet to meet─
We simply happened to pass by, this time too.
And that’s why.
That’s why it was probably fortunate that we’d parted ways before any ties could form between us.
Was I lucky or what?
“Fine,” I muttered. I took my phone, still in my hand, and put it back in my pocket. “That must have done something─to up my intensity as a human.”
I was stronger─which meant that my battle with Dramaturgy, my mission to return Kissshot’s right leg to her─would surely go off without a hitch.
Right now, that was what I needed to do most.
My heart aching was not a problem.
My heart aching was not the issue.
I stepped forward.
It’d taken me more time than I’d expected, but there still seemed to be no risk of being late─to begin with, my destination wasn’t far from the bookstore.
The location of my battle with Dramaturgy, as specified by Oshino, was a spot I knew well.
The athletic field of Naoetsu Private High School.
008
You can’t schedule a time or a place for vampire hunting.
The need can pop up whenever and wherever, and searching for the vampire to then slay is the vampire hunter’s way─but it’d be quite a problem if such an extraordinarily troublesome, ultra-pragmatic, and dangerous doctrine were put into practice in a modern-day provincial town in Japan.
An intermediary between here and there─Oshino managed to live up to his boast, selecting a location for our battle where not a soul would notice us even if we were to rampage around.
I had to say, the choice of a school’s athletic field wasn’t a bad choice at all. A school at night was like a blind spot, in a way. A place that noisy and boisterous during the day undergoes a transformation at night─and gets no one’s attention. It seemed made for vampire slaying.
Of course, we couldn’t enter into the school building. With the teachers’ room, the principal’s room, and other targets for burglars inside, it was protected by a professional security system.
However─as long as you could scale the school’s gates, its athletic field was accessible.
So, for a short period of time, there would be no witnesses.
An excellent spot for a battle.
“…But why Naoetsu High?”
“Because it’s where you go to school,” Oshino had answered me.
“Yeah, and I’m asking you why you chose the athletic field of the school I go to. I guess it’s far away from any houses, so it might be a suitable battleground in that sense. But doesn’t it seem obvious that it’ll be hard for me to fight there?”
“Hard? You’ve got it wrong. It’ll be easy,” Oshino said, wagging his finger. “It’ll be easy for you, Araragi. You’re a brand-new vampire who turned just the other day, and you’ll be facing an expert vampire hunter─wouldn’t you want to go around on familiar terrain?”
“Gore Round? Is that some kind of vampire ability? I don’t know how to use that.”
“Go around. With a locational advantage.”
It wouldn’t be fair otherwise so he threw that in for free─that was how Oshino put it.
I understood his point─but still, I didn’t like the idea of doing something as strange as this at the high school I attended…
Oh well. Let’s see some superpowered school action then, quite literally this time.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
My greeting sounded somewhat moronic. But my opponent had arrived before me, so it was something I had to say, even if I wasn’t late.
In the center of the field sat the mountain of a man, cross-legged. With his mouth shut and his eyes closed, he nearly seemed to be in a state of Zen meditation.
In response to my voice, the man─Dramaturgy─said, “■■■■.”
No, I didn’t know what he said.
Then─“Ah yes, the language of the land I am in,” he said as he stood.
He really was huge. It was like he had to be careful not to hit his head on the moon.
Hm…?
He didn’t have his flamberges? Those wavy greatswords?
Not even one?
Wha?
“Do not misunderstand─my brethren,” Dramaturgy began speaking to me in stunningly fluent Japanese, though he’d taken so long that I’d gone and entertained suspicions about his unarmed state. “I have not come here to slay you.”
“……”
What was this guy trying to tell me now? I flinched into a battle stance.
I mentally flipped through the index of Aikido from Step One! which now sat, with the rest of my bag, outside the gates. What moves could I use in a real fight… Umm…
As I was lost in thought, Dramaturgy repeated words to the same effect. “I did not accede to the pronouncements of that man─that frivolous-looking man─out of a desire to slay you.”
“If you’re not here to slay me─then what?”
That frivolous-looking man.
He had to be referring to Oshino. So he looked sleazy even to guys like Dramaturgy…
“I hope to recruit you,” Dramaturgy revealed, forgoing any formalities and cutting straight to the heart of the matter. “I put this to you. Why not don the garb of a vampire hunter─like myself?”
“…What the hell.” I put on a brave face in reaction to this unexpected turn of events. “Last time we met, you tried to chop me down, no questions asked─so why are you saying this now?”
“Episode and Guillotine Cutter were there at the time. I could not extend this kind of an invitation in the company of those two. But I would regret having to kill a being as rare as you─a thrall of Heartunderblade, the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire.”
“If I join you,” I asked, “you’ll return Kissshot’s right leg─is that the deal?”
“…You’re quite courageous to call that woman Kissshot, but your conjecture is incorrect. Your first job would surely be to kill Heartunderblade.”
“Then it’s not happening.”
There wasn’t any point in talking. In any case, I was going to turn back into a human─how could I become a kinslaying vampire?
Think about who you’re talking to.
“I see. That is unfortunate. Truly unfortunate. I currently have fifty-three brethren─and you seemed fit to join them, as someone whose mistress seems to have little control over him.”
Little control over me? Was it true, then?
Had Kissshot─failed to make me her servant?
“Fifty-three, that’s a pretty big number. If there really are that many vampire kinslayers, then I suppose Kissshot was right. If I’d agreed, I’d have been Buddy No. 54?”
