by Nisioisin
Then, his body manifested next to it.
“You could surrender, too─not that I wouldn’t just slaughter you tomorrow instead. I don’t care if you think I’m being repetitive or uncreative, I’ll kill you using the exact same method. There isn’t a thing a vampire can do about its weakness to crosses, after all.”
“……”
He was a professional. While he may have been moved by emotions, he was still a pro.
I looked at the shoulder wound I’d suffered at the outset. It still wasn’t done healing─and the pain coming from it was still extreme.
No hand to play.
From the get-go, outside of a quick face-off, there was no way, given my total lack of experience, I was going to defeat a seasoned opponent. If he was going to take his time like this─there was nothing I could do!
I was done for then.
I could run to the P.E. storage shed, but why throw shot puts and rollers against an opponent whose body was mist? How was I to strike back against an opponent I couldn’t damage with physical strikes?
Just as I was coming to an oddly calm judgment that fear had fixed my body in place and that I probably wouldn’t be able to dodge Episode’s next attack, I heard a loud voice.
“A-Araragi!”
No auditory hallucination could be that loud─and upon looking in the voice’s direction, who do I find but…or actually, I already knew who it was after all the conversations we’d had. It was Tsubasa Hanekawa.
She’d appeared─from out of the school building’s shadows. Had she been hiding there, just like the other day?
Ridiculous, Hanekawa had gone home…
“You can’t give up yet! The opponent turns into mist─” Putting both of her hands to her mouth like a megaphone, Hanekawa continued to yell, completely ignoring my confusion. “He turns into mist, so that means─”
“…Gotta love it,” he said.
Episode didn’t even seem to hesitate as he threw the giant cross he’d readied towards me─in Hanekawa’s direction.
Hm?
Huh?
Why do such a thing, the bastard…
“H-Hanekawaaaaaaa!”
I’d heard that Hanekawa’s reflexes were by no means poor. She was a model student. Even her P.E. scores were appropriately off the charts─but of course, within the bounds of human common sense.
Needless to say for a vampire─she was no match even for a half-vampire.
She wasn’t blessed with the necessary vision or burst of speed to dodge the cross─and barely managed to get half a step out of its way.
One corner of the cross gouged her flank.
Naturally, since she wasn’t a vampire, she neither burst into flames nor evaporated from coming in contact with the cross, but the giant crucifix was still a hefty mass of silver.
What was a soft human flank to it?
“……gh!”
I ran over to Hanekawa using every ounce of strength I had in my legs. It felt like I was able to reach her in a split second─and in fact, I was able to catch her before she fell backward to the ground.
But─it was still all too late.
Hanekawa’s uniform was torn, her skin was torn, her muscles were torn, her ribs were torn, her organs were torn. Crimson blood gushed out from her─and wouldn’t stop.
The wound was simply too big to stop the bleeding.
Naturally, neither the pieces of flesh that had scattered from her body, nor the flowing blood, evaporated.
It just seeped into the field.
Taking its time staining it red, red.
“H-Hanekawa, Hanekawa, Hanekawa, Hanekawa!”
“…Hee-hee.”
She laughed─bashfully.
In this situation.
As if she were embarrassed that I’d seen her organs.
A shy smile.
“Be quiet, Araragi.”
“……!”
“Y-Your phone.”
Hanekawa’s complexion was growing worse and worse. But she didn’t let her smile fade.
She only continued to smile as she added, “Forgot your phone, didn’t you? I came─to give it to you.”
“Wh-Who cares about a phone!” I yelled.
But Hanekawa had to know that too. This bit about my phone was just an excuse for her.
Plain worried─she must have come here, instead of going home.
And unable to stand by and watch any longer─she’d showed herself.
She had to have known how dangerous that was!
“Get it together…you’re dealing with mist.” Though the ground grew redder and redder, Hanekawa’s tone remained firm. “Mist. Which means water.”
“…? …Ha-Hanekawa?”
“Araragi.” Her voice still firm, she slowly began to shut her eyes. “What’s your long jump record, roughly?”
Sink.
As if on cue, Hanekawa’s body suddenly grew heavy. But she’d lost so much blood─did human beings grow so heavy just from losing consciousness?
In that case…what happened when they lost their lives?
“Hah. Gotta love it. How long are you going to keep me waiting?”
When I saw him, Episode had already picked up the giant cross that had pierced Hanekawa─and had it readied in my direction.
“If you don’t move, that girl’s body is only going to take more damage.”
“Y-You…”
“Let me just say that you’re the one who broke our promise, thrall of the aberration slayer. This was supposed to be one on one. But I’ll agree to call it even since I laid my hands on a third party.”
“Hanekawa─is a normal human.”
She wouldn’t have counted. What could she have done?
“How could you, to a normal human!”
Or…are humans your enemies as well?
More than targets of hatred─but enemies?
Not just vampires─but humans too!
Still, why lay his hands on Hanekawa─even the advice she’d given me, in a firm tone to the very end before she faded into unconsciousness, sadly passed over my─
“……!”
Mist?
Water?
Long jump?
Oh. Never mind.
Never mind. I understood.
Yes─my “locational advantage.”
I take it back, Hanekawa did count.
Now I could beat him!
“Raaaaaahhhh!”
I screamed with all my might─and charged.
Having gently laid her body on the ground, I was taking Hanekawa’s suggestion and acting on it immediately without so much as revising it.
I drew a straight line from Episode’s current location to “that place”─and came to a halt atop it. It was at the exact same time that Episode hurled the giant cross in my direction. I’d made it─or no, not yet.
The conditions wouldn’t be met unless I dodged the cross!
Instead of leaping out of its way, I ducked─and passing above my head, the cross took a tuft of my hair with it.
Continuing along its path, the cross pierced “that place.”
“What, really? You get mad, but you’re just going to run away? Gah! Lame to the bitter end. Gotta love you!”
Wasting no time, Episode turned his body to mist and chased after the cross.
But I wasn’t idly staying where I was. Still crouched, I used my knees like a spring and leapt up into the air!
The impact from this didn’t simply cause the field to sink in─it cracked. I’d have to flatten it back out later again.
But now wasn’t the time to be worrying about that─it was my first time attempting to maintain my posture in mid-air, and it was fairly hard.
A vampire’s powerful leap.
I had probably jumped about sixty feet up.
And the same distance forward─sixty feet.
Exactly what I had aimed for.
“That place” is where I landed.
“That place”─like the P.E. storag
e shed, I couldn’t not know about it, having attended the school and taken P.E. classes for two years.
Namely, the sand pit at the edge of the field─I landed there.
With a long jump.
Though without a running start. Not that I needed one.
Either way, it was undeniably a long jump.
I landed right by the cross buried deep in the sand─once again, just as Episode reached the pit.
“Hah─gotta love it! That’s some real power, but you think such a sloppy kick would hit me when I’m a cloud of mist?”
Episode laughed, his body still transformed into mist─when it was no time for him to be laughing.
“You’re mist. Water, in other words,” I said. “What would happen if I dumped sand on you?”
Long jumps sent up magnificent sprays of sand when you landed. Even a regular one, but this was a vampire’s long jump. Nearly all the sand held by the pit danced up from the sheer impact of the landing.
Prior to this, the cross thrown by Episode piercing the pit had whipped sand into the air. My landing there dealt the final blow.
Indeed─Episode’s body manifested.
Just as Hanekawa’s blood seeped into the ground, one might say─not as an intentional act, but as a simple natural phenomenon, Episode showed himself.
“Wh-Wha?!”
“…Ah ha!”
Taking advantage of Episode’s bewilderment, I sprang on his frail-looking body─and as the flying sand began to rain down on us, I used my full weight to pin him down.
I was sitting on Episode’s back, but he still writhed and resisted─I continued to hold him down by force.
I held him down, and strangled his neck.
Episode wouldn’t be able to turn his body into mist for a while.
Then me, with my superior raw ability, would win.
Me.
Me. Me. Me. Me.
“……e!”
I’d kill him!
There was another me, detached and elsewhere, observing me as my mind went blank.
Completely blank.
That I had become a vampire, that I was facing a half-vampire, the stuff about Kissshot’s left leg─
All of it disappeared from my mind.
Just…
Just Hanekawa’s organs. They stuck in my blank mind─and that was why.
I had to do it to him.
This guy─I had to kill─
“Okay, enough.”
Plop.
Right then─a hand landed softly on my shoulder.
“Keep going and you won’t be a human anymore.”
“……!”
I turned around, my hands still on Episode’s neck─to find the man in the Hawaiian shirt, Mèmè Oshino.
As sand rained down, he just stood in it.
“A─Ah.”
For Dramaturgy as well─he said he’d been watching from somewhere. He must have been doing so this time too. I’d completely forgotten─but in that case!
“Y-You could’ve! You could have stopped Hanekawa!”
“Don’t yell. So spirited, Araragi. Something good happen to you today?”
Even at a time like this─Oshino laughed. He wore an obnoxious smile.
“Well, I’m sorry to dampen your spirits, but the fight’s been decided. Just look, he’s passed out.”
“Wha─”
I only noticed after he told me. Episode’s eyes had rolled back in his head. I let go of him, startled, but clear impressions of my fingers remained on his throat.
“Wh…Wha?”
What had I been about to do?
Had I been─trying to kill the guy?
This half-vampire…half-human guy?
But… But Hanekawa.
Hanekawa.
“Hanekawa!”
“Yeah, I saw.”
“Y-You saw? Why didn’t you stop her?!”
“It’s not included in the bill. I’ve only taken on negotiating with three vampire hunters. Anything beyond that requires a separate fee. I can’t get mixed up with ordinary people.”
Two million─his fee, his compensation.
The balance.
“Then tell me that from the beginning! If you had─”
“You would’ve paid another two million yen as missy class president’s fee?”
“Two million? I would’ve paid three!”
“How─how stout of you.”
“You’re joking around at a time like this, Oshino? What’s your deal?!”
“The one you’ve just proposed, Araragi. We have a deal. Three million yen,” Oshino said calmly. “I’ll give you a hint, then. Try using your head, Araragi─what’s that immortal body of yours for?”
“Huh?”
“You’re right, a lone human inserting herself into a battle between a vampire and a half-vampire is no call for murder. That’s going too far─so I’ll use my additional fee to teach you something neat. You shouldn’t be strangling his neck here. Try to remember?”
“Remember…”
What?
I didn’t have the time to be asking myself.
Like Kissshot had done earlier─I flattened my fingers and thrust them into my temple.
So what if we never see an anime adaptation!
I fiddled around inside my brain like mad, sensing every nauseating bit of blood, spinal fluid, and cerebral tissue until I felt sick. And then─
“……!”
Soon enough, I remembered.
A vampire characteristic─I made my decision on the spot. With my hand still stuck in my head, I left Oshino and Episode behind to run to where Hanekawa’s body lay.
Five minutes.
If no oxygen reached the brain for five minutes, it stopped functioning─but that meant if I made it before then, it would do even if her heart had stopped.
It would do. Not even three minutes had passed.
I pulled my fingers out from my temple─and then, I dripped the blood stuck to the hand into Hanekawa’s gouged-out flank, her oversized wound.
Yes, Kissshot had told me. Vampire blood has the power to heal─and in this case, it was my blood, that of the thrall of the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.
Of course, being a vampire, my blood evaporated almost as soon as it left my body, and I had to wound myself over and over to keep bleeding─but as I did so, it happened before my eyes.
Hanekawa’s wound began to heal.
Her organs regenerated, her bones regenerated, her muscles regenerated, her skin regenerated─and finally, she returned back to the way she was, with hardly a scar left.
It didn’t even look like regen─more like someone had rewound her.
I tried touching, gingerly.
I stroked Hanekawa’s flank.
Pale, gently sloping, less fleshy than her age warranted─it was so soft and smooth that I was afraid it might crumble if I pressed too hard, but for all that, it existed, without a doubt.
“…Ah, aaah!”
All at once, the emotions that I had been stifling began to flow. My heart was brimming with them all of a sudden.
“Ha-Hanekawa!”
I clung to Hanekawa’s abdomen with everything I had. Even though I’d end up back where we started if I destroyed her slender body by hugging it with a vampire’s strength.
“…Araragi,” Hanekawa said abruptly, having regained consciousness.
No─she seemed to have come to a little sooner.
“Araragi, why are you rubbing your cheek against my stomach, and so fondly too?”
“Uh.”
“Also, my uniform is torn─should I chalk that up to you?”
They say people didn’t always remember the moments before they lost consciousness, and that seemed to be the case here with Hanekawa.
