by Nisioisin
I think someone once told me that you never escape the “mal” in “normal.”
Stopping her would be impossible now─Guillotine Cutter, the all-important hunter standing at the top of that three-man pyramid, had been eaten, and it wasn’t as if those three together could have slain her on their own.
Not Dramaturgy.
And not Episode.
No matter how much work or emotions drove them, they wouldn’t try to take on Kissshot now that she was in her perfect form─a fact that made me realize just how strong Guillotine Cutter’s sense of duty must have been for him to confront her alone.
I didn’t want to praise him. Not under any circumstances.
But still, he showed just how strong a human could be.
Though he knew it could be him that didn’t survive the encounter, he didn’t grow timid.
If anyone was being timid─it was me.
Mèmè Oshino─Oshino, the man who was able to steal Kissshot’s heart from her without her noticing, could just maybe stop her. But I doubted he would.
He was already done balancing everything out.
The game.
The situation─had come to a close.
Humans had lost.
Lost─to Kissshot.
And anyway, how could I possibly ask him after all that? “Please stop Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade”? There was no way I could utter those words.
If any request was off-limits to me now, that was it.
“─I just hate it.”
This spring break.
I’d never imagined that everything I’d done over it would turn out to be a mistake. And I’d even thought that despite all the twists and turns, it hadn’t been a bad spring break in retrospect─that it wasn’t so bad after all.
In reality, it was the worst spring break possible.
It was hell, plain and simple.
It was all a big joke that felt like hell.
And I was nothing but a clueless fool.
“I hate it, but…”
But.
Something else was also giving off smoke inside of me.
It made me feel regret and remorse, and I did everything I could to avert my attention from it─but I’d noticed one more terrifying fact.
And I could only avert my eyes for so long.
Right. There was one more obvious fact.
“I hate it, but I─”
It was too obvious, self-evident.
“I’m─a vampire too.”
No matter how I feared, loathed, and hated vampires─I was one myself.
Yup.
I could feel the weight of Oshino’s words.
Words that weighed heavily on my heart.
Words that weighed heavily─on my stomach.
─Oh, and by the way.
─This is simply out of curiosity, Araragi─
─But haven’t you felt hungry lately?
“…………!”
My stomach─was empty.
I now felt hunger.
─I see.
─I think─
─It’s time you started to feel hungry.
─It’s already been two weeks─
“Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit…!”
I could still hold out─for now.
It was just a little rumble in my stomach.
But─if Oshino’s words were meant to suggest what was happening to me now─soon, I would want to suck a human’s blood.
I would feel the urge to suck blood.
And I would want to eat a human being.
Why wouldn’t I? I was a monster.
I was a greater being.
“Dammit!”
Her first thrall.
There was no way for me to know what kind of man he was─but I began to think that this, or something like it, was the reason he took his own life after only a few years. I knew he was different from me─but in the end, we were the same. Unable to bear himself after being reduced to a monster─no, after being raised into one. Kissshot seemed to be unable to understand these emotions─but how could she?
They were human emotions.
And now, four hundred years later.
I, her second thrall─found myself in the same position.
“Heh… Hahahaha.”
At last─I began to laugh.
All I could do was laugh.
When I thought about it, it was a pretty comical situation.
It’d make for a great funny story.
I’d gone every which way and found out in the end that everything I’d done was a mistake─an audience, if I had one, would rate me a talented jester.
One person could only be so stupid. And I’d been so stupid that it was funny.
“What am I going to do now? My only option now is death.”
Obvious, one might say. It was the obvious conclusion.
Because what was the point?
Now? I didn’t have any desire to turn back into a human now.
To have my hopes fulfilled after the mess I made would be utter selfishness─or no.
Talking about selfishness was whitewashing the truth.
My thoughts weren’t as laudable as that.
I was simply scared.
Scared that the moment I turned back into a human─Kissshot would eat me.
Of course she would.
I was afraid of falling to the bottom of the food chain, that was all.
But it was no reason to stay a vampire.
I didn’t want to suck blood or eat people, either.
I even found myself detesting my immortal body.
And so.
“My only option is to die.”
And not in a devil-may-care way─I really had to die.
The cause of death for nine-tenths of vampires.
I wasn’t going to be dying of boredom.
But guilt─was absolutely lethal.
And so, I had no choice but to choose death, just as her first thrall did─it was the only path left to me.
Really, though─why had I decided to hide in the P.E. shed? Why had I tried to continue living, during daytime?
For example.
For example, I could clear the barricade, open the steel doors, and hurl my body onto the athletic field─and die there.
A death wish. Is that what she called it?
Of course, considering the recuperative power of a thrall of Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, I wouldn’t die easily even if I threw myself under the sun─it would be an endless cycle of evaporation and regeneration, but still.
I’d surely die before the sun set.
Surely, if I took off my clothes and bathed naked in the sun, in what would be my first and last try at public streaking.
The Vampirer’s New Clothes.
I agree, not even funny.
I told you I prefer playing the straight man to the funny man.
“…Oh jeez.”
I messed up.
Messed up big time.
I thought I could do a better job─and I thought I was doing a better job.
But look at how it actually turned out.
Hard even to look at.
Idiot, now all I could do was go and die.
“…Oh, right.”
The moment I made my decision, I grew calm again as if I’d been exorcized.
I needed to call home.
It had completely slipped my mind, but I was supposed to be on a journey of self-discovery─though in reality, I had managed to do the opposite and lose myself entirely.
Or maybe it would be better if I didn’t call them.
How’d I ever tell them that I was about to go off and die? It wasn’t like I could explain why. Maybe it was best to let it be─the eldest brother went missing while on a journey of self-discovery.
I didn’t know how they would take it, especially my parents. As for my little sisters, they might be able to joke about it─their brother, the runaway boy.
This wasn’t a fun
little case of a runaway, though─it was as serious as you could get. But again, I thought, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.
“Still─I wish I’d told Hanekawa.”
Besides, the right thing would have been to tell her.
Hanekawa didn’t deserve to be left in the dark after all of her involvement, after all I’d dragged her into─but unfortunately, I was currently in a P.E. shed to avoid both the sun’s rays and Kissshot, and I had no way to contact her.
I’d deleted her cell phone number and her email address myself.
In front of her.
To wound her.
While Hanekawa and I began meeting each other after that, it had felt too awkward to ask her for her contact info again. I was probably the only one feeling awkward about it─but I still felt bad.
What a chicken, what a loser.
While I was good at math, I wasn’t great with numbers. There was no way I could remember an eleven-digit phone number, and an alphabetic email address was hopeless. Her info would be on my phone if I’d contacted her even once─but I hadn’t a single time, nor had she. When I thought about it, Hanekawa didn’t have my number or email address either.
She still didn’t have my contact info.
If only I’d told her then.
…If only I’d told her─then what?
Did I think that Hanekawa was going to call me at this exact moment?
How ridiculous.
No matter how amazing Hanekawa was, she didn’t have ESP─life doesn’t unfold that conveniently.
If God liked stories to be that convenient, then I wouldn’t be in my position to begin with─and I wouldn’t have committed all those blunders.
While I realized it was an empty act of resistance, I still decided to pull out my cell phone, in part to check the time.
It was five in the afternoon. I’d been holed up for over twelve hours─though it didn’t feel like it at all. That was the only reaction as the empty indication of the time of day entered my field of vision and my brain.
Meanwhile, the pointless struggle of opening my contacts list─actually wasn’t pointless, and the fact struck me like a hammer blow.
Because there.
I found Tsubasa Hanekawa’s name.
“Like I said…” the words slipped from my mouth.
I found myself suddenly moved, despite my situation─I never imagined that I, of all people, would ever be moved by the inorganic screen of a mobile phone.
There wasn’t a thing to be glad about.
It was a spring break filled with nothing but misery as far as I knew.
“…Don’t mess with people’s phones without permission!”
She’d had plenty of opportunities.
It could’ve been when she came to the field to give me my phone while I was fighting Episode, or any other time. I was pretty lax about holding on to my cell phone and didn’t even keep it locked.
It’s not like I had much personal info at all on it─but.
My once-empty address book had an entry for Tsubasa Hanekawa’s name once again.
Her phone number─and her email address.
“……”
I’d thought it was fine.
I did want to talk to Hanekawa, and I thought I owed her a talk, but another part of me had thought that it would be fine if I never got to.
Not to say I thought it was fine to keep her in the dark.
But at the same time, I didn’t want to have to tell her anything.
So─while I went on about this turn of events being far too convenient, it might’ve been more convenient for me the other way.
But this was too much. I had no choice now.
Or rather─I did choose.
I sent a text to Hanekawa.
Because I was afraid I might cry if I called her.
I wondered what Hanekawa was up to on the last day of spring break─studying at the library, maybe? I didn’t know where the library was, but if she was, she might have her phone turned off.
Oh well.
I’d be patient and wait for her reply.
Or so I thought, but her reply came immediately.
When I checked the time on the message, it had arrived with the same timestamp as my outgoing one. It hadn’t even taken her a minute.
No way…
That meant she’d responded in less than sixty seconds.
I checked the message, assuming that it would be a brief reply, only to find an honest-to-goodness letter, beginning with a “Dear Araragi” and ending with a “Sincerely yours.”
Unbelievable.
I knew that girls were fast at texting, but…
I was reminded of the day of closing ceremonies, when she first entered her personal info into my phone. Hanekawa was a fairly fast typist then, but…
Wow.
Actually, though I didn’t know for sure because I really only ever sent them to my family, were text messages supposed to be this formal? Weren’t they more a tool for no-frills communication?
In any case, to summarize Hanekawa’s message, it said, “Wait there, I’ll be right over.”
Unable to summarize the situation well, I’d only been able to convey a rough outline of what had happened. But true to form, Hanekawa seemed to have figured out the entire situation.
Honestly.
If only Hanekawa had met Kissshot instead. “Rumors have a funny way of coming true,” was it? Hanekawa had spread a rumor about vampires─but in the end, I was the one who ended up encountering both her and Kissshot.
A thought suddenly came to me.
According to Hanekawa, rumors were going around the girls about Kissshot─could someone else entirely, neither me nor Hanekawa, but a girl who went to our school, or even another, have encountered Kissshot?
If someone had, what happened when they met?
Did they just pass each other by?
Or did the girl have her blood sucked─and her body eaten?
While it seemed like it would be huge news, if her body had been eaten with not a scrap of evidence left behind, then the talk may not have spread beyond her family and friends.
A journey of self-discovery. Running away from home lite.
Maybe that’s how people would see it. Maybe not if the number of victims began to pile up─but Kissshot didn’t seem to need that much “food,” perhaps owing to her elevated rank as a vampire…so it seemed within the realm of possibility.
“Oshino said about two weeks, didn’t he? Then maybe that means one person a month for Kissshot…so, including Guillotine Cutter, just two or three victims?”
Of course, it wasn’t a question of numbers.
But if true─it wouldn’t have surfaced.
“…What could it be? It feels like I’m still overlooking something…”
Overlooking something, or maybe forgetting to do something.
But now that I’d contacted Hanekawa, there shouldn’t have been anything left for me to do─and that was when.
Hanekawa showed up.
I heard someone knocking on the steel doors of the P.E. shed.
Clang, clang.
“I’m here to deliver a girl.”
“……”
Not funny.
She was trying to be considerate, but in the wrong way.
In any case, I took apart the barricade (both building it and taking it apart were easy for me, with my vampire strength) and told Hanekawa to slide in sideways while cracking open the door as little as possible. I pressed my body to the wall so that no sunlight would hit me as she entered. Judging by the time, it would be dark soon, but the late-afternoon sun was still probably out.
I’d be taking in sunlight sooner or later, though. Every inch of my body would be taking it in.
