by Nisioisin
“So you need to believe her. She’d be such a poor little thing if you didn’t. Remember what I was saying? A relationship based on trust, Araragi. Don’t worry, you’ll be turning back into a human─in fact, the real trouble might come after that.”
“…After that?”
“I’m telling you not to think of yourself as the victim here. Playing the victim─doesn’t sit well with me.”
Those were harsh words. Unexpected ones, too, putting me at a loss.
“Hey, I don’t care how I sit with you…but I’m not trying to play the victim here.”
“That’s good to hear. I’ll keep it in mind, Araragi. But either way, looking at you from my perspective─you’re being naivë.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oops. I meant naïve,” Oshino corrected himself.
Whatta way to misspeak.
“Every aberration has its reasons, they say. Araragi, you need to give some more thought to why you encountered a vampire.”
“Well, that’d be…by chance, no?”
“I’m sure it was by chance. What you need to think about is why that chance came about…but for now, maybe it’s best if you prioritized getting back Heartunderblade’s limbs. I’m not obligated to worry about you, Araragi, but the way you fought makes me a little concerned.”
“Well…I won’t say you can count on me.”
To get back on topic, though.
If that was what Oshino, an expert, said─then I supposed I didn’t need to worry.
Right. Kissshot was arrogant, but she was true to me─she may call me her servant, but she also seemed to see me as someone who’d saved her life.
In that case, I needed to respond in kind. Meeting trust with trust─a relationship based on trust demanded it.
“So, do you think the kid is about done eating?”
“Yeah…I guess. I’ll need to ask her about my next opponent…Episode.”
I opened the door to the classroom and went back inside.
Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, who’d looked like a ten-year-old girl, had transformed, sure enough─into looking like a twelve-year-old girl.
She’d grown.
Already bigger than just the last time I saw her.
010
“So this girl’s body grows each time she eats one of her stolen limbs,” Hanekawa indicated her grasp of the situation.
The two of us were speaking immediately after sundown on April 1st. Kissshot was still asleep. A vampire’s day and night were reversed, and that applied to me as well─but feeling bad about dragging a model student like Hanekawa out of the house at too late of an hour, I’d tried and woken up early.
There was a barrier placed around the abandoned cram school. That’s what Oshino said.
It not only hid my presence and Kissshot’s, it also made it difficult for regular people to find it without a guide─apparently. That’s why I had Hanekawa come close by so I could go pick her up after the sun set.
Hanekawa was on time and present at the spot we’d agreed upon. As always, she was wearing her uniform.
“Heya.” Hanekawa raised her hand. She was being affable without a shred of awkwardness. It was just the right amount of distance and felt comfortable.
“Did you bring what I asked?”
“Yup. See?”
“Oh. Thanks. This way, then,” I said, showing Hanekawa to the school.
Private Property, No Trespassing.
We passed through a fence bearing the sign (the ruined cram school’s fence was befittingly ruined and filled with holes) and headed inside the building.
Oshino was out negotiating, and Kissshot was asleep. I had told Kissshot that I’d be bringing Hanekawa, but she hadn’t seemed particularly interested. Since our conversation might get pretty involved, maybe it was better to go to a different room, but I wanted Hanekawa to check out what Kissshot looked like.
That’s why I decided to speak to Hanekawa in the room on the second floor that I usually spent my time in, with Kissshot enjoying her beauty sleep right by us. Needless to say, the windows of the room were boarded up, and not even the light of the moon and stars filtered in. I was fine with my vampire eyes, but I’d arranged for a flashlight for Hanekawa, who had normal vision─which is to say, she’d gotten it herself.
After a little bit of chit-chat (I’d been deprived of newspapers and TV since spring break started), I told Hanekawa the story up to that morning─and she listened with interest, nodding.
A model student.
Maybe her curiosity about the unknown exceeded most people’s.
I told her everything I could. I didn’t want to hide anything. Even if it was the first of April, I didn’t want to lie.
And it was when I had finished telling Hanekawa about Kissshot’s “growth” that she said─
“So this girl’s body grows each time she eats one of her stolen limbs… ‘This girl’ might be an odd way to refer to a five-hundred-year-old vampire─but is that the deal?”
Hmm. She seemed to have a decent grasp of the situation.
Yes, I nodded.
“When she ate her right leg…from the knee down, she aged about two years, so… Yeah, after recovering the rest of her arms and legs, she’ll probably be back to her old body…and look like a twenty seven year old.”
“Huh.”
“Well, to put it Lord Frieza style, she has two more transformations left, one for her right leg, and one for both of her arms.”
“That does clarify it for me,” Hanekawa said, glancing at Kissshot snoring away atop the simple bed that Oshino had built.
While she may have been a vampire, at first sight she was just a cute twelve-year-old girl… She and I being together in an abandoned building had a real whiff of criminality about it.
I just had to pray that Hanekawa wouldn’t come to that conclusion.
“So maybe─it’s my fault,” she said.
“Huh? What is?”
“Your run-in with a vampire.”
“……”
Why would she think that?
While I said I didn’t want to hide anything and told her everything I could, I wasn’t a total idiot. Hadn’t I skipped over the stuff about her panties and the dirty books?
But as it turned out, I was fretting for no reason.
“Rumors have a funny way of coming true, right? Especially for ghost stories and stuff. They say rumoring has a way of─having them find their way to you.”
“Hunh. But it’s not like I─”
Oh.
Right. That day─I’d heard a rumor from Hanekawa.
A rumor about vampires. Walk around by yourself at night, and…
“But that doesn’t make sense. You told me about the rumor, so you’d have to run into a vampire too.”
“I don’t have to, it’s probably just that your chances increase… Besides, I have, haven’t I?”
“Huh?”
“You, Araragi.”
Ah. Right.
I was a vampire too.
So that was it─on my way to fighting Dramaturgy, I’d happened to run into Hanekawa, then and there, perhaps due to such a heightened probability.
Every aberration has its reasons.
The reason that I met a vampire─
“There’s another way of thinking about it. That the rumor actually precedes the aberration─that rumors cause them to be born. Like with oral traditions, you know?”
“I see. Are they rumored because they exist, or do they exist because they’re rumored. It’s like the chicken or the egg, which of them tastes better?”
“Huh? I like eggs better.”
I had meant it as a joke.
A dud.
“…You know the answers to everything, don’t you?”
“Not everything. I just know what I know.”
“Is that so,” I nodded before bringing the conversation back on track. “Putting the talk about rumors aside. Hanekawa─yesterday, you were going out of
your way to look for a vampire, if anything.”
That’s when I’d gone nuts. I didn’t get mad this time, of course.
“Why were you? Existences greater than humans─was it? You said you wanted to talk to one or something?”
“Well, it wasn’t as if I was seriously looking for a vampire. I was stamping my feet for something that I know doesn’t exist, more like. How do I say this─maybe I’ve been going in circles and wanted a change in my life?”
“A change, eh…”
In my case, I’d gotten one, not only in my life, but also in my biology.
It really was too much.
But─a model student.
A class president among class presidents, Tsubasa Hanekawa, feeling like she was going in circles came as a bit of a surprise to me.
Then again, maybe that was normal─she was human.
As for me, I still felt lost even as a vampire.
Actually, I felt a lot more lost.
“It was just my way of trying to escape from reality.”
“I’d love to get back to reality, myself.”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to,” Hanekawa said. She had nothing to back up her words─but they made me glad. “Like I said, I want to help─but considering how outrageous the situation is, it doesn’t feel like there’s much I can do.”
“That’s not true,” I said, pointing at the backpack containing everything Hanekawa had brought. “Those clothes and daily essentials are a great help.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Hanekawa said bashfully. “Why don’t you hurry up and get changed, then? Your clothes are a mess.”
“Guh.”
“Honestly, I was shocked when you showed up to meet me looking like that. Doesn’t this Oshino person have clothes you could borrow?”
“All he owns are these Aloha shirts…”
“What’s wrong with an Aloha shirt?”
“Maybe if they were LOHAS shirts,” I said, picking the first similar-sounding word I could think of.
Not that I knew what it meant.
In any case, I couldn’t keep going around in the clothes I was wearing. It wouldn’t be an issue if I could generate matter like Kissshot, but it went without saying that I couldn’t.
“Yeah, you’re right. Umm…”
Still, it didn’t feel right changing clothes in front of a girl… I’d have to take my pants off, too.
“On second thought, maybe there’s no rush…ulp!”
I’d just realized something.
The previous night, I’d asked Hanekawa to “buy me a change of clothes” without giving it much thought, but…my situation being what it was, didn’t that mean not just shirts and trousers but underwear?
“……”
Whaa…
Whaaaaat?
“I-I guess I could at least change my shirt,” I said, putting up a calm exterior as I reached for the backpack Hanekawa had brought.
It was pretty full… Well, it did have more than clothes inside… But when I undid the zipper, the clothes were at the very top.
Actually, underwear was at the very top.
“Was medium okay?”
“Y-Yeah…”
“I got you both boxers and briefs.”
“……”
Why bother?
No, actually…this was my fault. It really was. How dim had I been? And because of that, Hanekawa had suffered the worse embarrassment, buying both boxers and briefs…
“? What’s the matter? You’re not going to change?”
“I will…” I said, grabbing the plain shirt folded under the underwear. It looked brand new, but it wasn’t in a bag, and the tag had been taken off. Had Hanekawa washed and dried the clothes once after buying them?
Why go so far?
It was like I had the dirt on her or something!
In any case, I took off my tattered shirt and began wriggling my arms through the sleeves of the plain shirt.
“Wait a sec,” Hanekawa said.
I stopped, but, uh, I was kind of topless…
“I knew it─I thought so yesterday too, but your body’s a little different, Araragi.”
“Huh?” But now that she mentioned it.
Was I─a little more muscular?
No, more than just a little─I had abs.
“I knew it,” Hanekawa repeated. “Something seemed a bit off when I saw you from behind yesterday─so it was your muscles. You also seem thinner, more cut.”
“……”
Identifying boys she barely knew from behind─Hanekawa, what are you, really?
That was the bigger question.
Then─
“Mumble, mumble.”
Kissshot seemed to have suddenly woken up.
If you were wondering, when she “grew,” her clothes and hair changed along with her body. As a ten year old, she’d worn a fluffy dress and had short, bobbed hair, but now that she was twelve, she had long hair and her dress looked a little more grown-up.
“Of course thy body has changed, ye’ve become a vampire. Our powers of healing work to keep our bodies in optimal condition.”
“Huh?”
“Gzzt…”
Having supplied that explanation, Kissshot dozed off.
Which was she, awake or asleep…
Still, it felt like she’d dropped a bomb shell?
Then again─maybe that’s how it was. My fingernails hadn’t grown since becoming a vampire, and I didn’t have to bathe. I couldn’t tell after only a week, but I doubted that my hair was growing, either.
So that was why. My new physique represented the ideal amount of muscle for my body and bone structure.
And if you kept going, you arrived at the muscular heights of Dramaturgy or turned parts of your body into weapons as an application of that ability.
“…She went back to sleep.”
“Yeah. Rising and shining doesn’t seem to be her thing.”
“And she’s five hundred years old?”
“According to the lady herself.”
“…She didn’t seem to notice me at all.” Then Hanekawa said, “Excuse me,” and touched my upper body.
She began to slowly stroke my abs and chest.
Stroke.
Stroke.
…Uh oh, I was getting mildly aroused.
Was she being naughty or what?
“You still feel the same as a human. But with subtly more muscle elasticity.”
“……”
A simple case of intellectual curiosity. Right, of course.
“You say ‘the same as a human,’ but have you touched other men’s bodies?”
“Huh? No no, never.” Hanekawa quickly pulled her hand away from my body, shy all of a sudden. “You’re right, I was speaking from imagination, not experience. I shouldn’t do that… Hurry and put on that shirt.”
“O-Okay.”
I put on the shirt.
She said it was a medium, but it felt a little on the large side─I figured it wouldn’t be a problem, though. I liked that it was a plain shirt, too.
“Hm. So it fits?”
“Yeah. Thanks─or rather, sorry about that. I’ll pay you back as soon as this is all over.”
“Forget about it. I’ve been saving my New Year’s gift money ever since I was little.”
“Don’t use that kind of money on me!”
Cash I could reimburse, but not memories!
What an unfathomable woman…
Carelessly requesting something of her could have dire consequences.
“There are two hoodies under that. Oh, were jeans okay for pants?”
“Yeah. Ease of movement is what matters most.”
“I eyeballed the waist and inseam sizes, but just tell me if they’re too tight or too short. I’ll go buy another pair.”
“……”
