by Nisioisin
“Hold on a second!”
A voice rang out to my back.
It reverberated through Naoetsu High’s athletic field.
I knew immediately that it was Hanekawa’s voice─and now that I heard it, I realized that I’d also heard the steel door of the P.E. shed opening just moments earlier.
“A-Araragi! Something’s not right here!”
As Hanekawa spoke to me from behind, my only thought was that if anything, there was something wrong with her.
How could she leave the P.E. shed under these circumstances─did she have no sense of fear? I knew in my mind that my body was immortal, but even then I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown just standing in front of Kissshot─hadn’t I told her Kissshot could destroy concrete blocks simply by looking at them?
So why? Why was she showing herself?
“Hanekawa! It doesn’t matter, just hide!”
I knew how risky it was, but I turned around.
“No, actually─run away! Just run away! Leave this place! Get as far away as you can from here!”
“N-No, Araragi─!”
Hanekawa─seemed flustered.
Hanekawa, always calm and composed, even when I’d done my best to hurt her, even when Episode blew a hole through her flank, even when Guillotine Cutter had her hostage─was clearly shaken.
“Something’s been all wrong, for a while now. Araragi, I-I think we’re still overlooking something hugely important─”
Overlooking?
Could we possibly be overlooking something even now? No, there was no way.
Only one thing remained for me to do─
“Shut up!” Kissshot yelled.
Kissshot seemed flustered as well.
This was quite the unexpected reaction.
Well, I’d seen Kissshot act flustered just once─that time when I was still human and made to abandon her.
That time when I made the right decision.
That was when she became flustered.
She cried, she pleaded, she apologized─
“This isn’t thy place to speak, ration!”
Kissshot glared.
And with that one motion, the steel door of the P.E. shed behind Hanekawa went flying.
That was the power of her eyes.
Unlike when I’d kicked it down, it seemed impossible to salvage─scrunched up like a ball of aluminum foil, the door had disappeared into the shed.
The ground around Hanekawa was now cracked into pieces. Everything around her and behind her had been erased.
Just by being looked at.
With just a single look.
The iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire─the aberration slayer!
“…Ah.”
This display left even Hanekawa speechless.
But I understood.
I already understood.
I knew.
I knew how precarious she could be.
Tsubasa Hanekawa.
I knew that something like that wasn’t going to stop her.
She glared right back─firmly, even─at Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.
“Miss Heartunderblade. Could you be─”
“Stay out of this, lowly human!”
Kissshot looked at Hanekawa again.
She looked at her.
She was using the power of her eyes, the power of a vampire’s eyes─but!
An opening!
An opening, which hadn’t even been hinted at during our futile fight to the death─finally showed itself!
Of course, unlike me, Kissshot certainly had room to take her eyes off of our fight─but right now was different.
Now was different.
As she looked at Hanekawa─she was flustered.
Openings everywhere.
“…Kissshot!”
Screaming her name, I jumped in between her and Hanekawa.
I took the full brunt of her eyes.
As my entire body was blown away and scattered─
I sunk my teeth into her throat.
I sunk my teeth into her, my elongated canines, my fangs.
“……!”
A way to slay Kissshot.
A way to slay a vampire.
A way for a vampire to slay a vampire─
Once you thought about it, it couldn’t be more self-evident.
My instincts told me how.
I didn’t know if they were my human ones or my vampire ones, but still.
In fact, she’d told me.
Kissshot’s not-quite-advice to me before my fight with Dramaturgy.
─I doubt Dramaturgy would use the tactic─
─But do be careful not to let him suck thy blood─
─Vampires who have their blood sucked by another vampire will see their very existence wrung dry─
Back then, I wasn’t interested in sucking blood─but things were different now.
I was feeling a bit hungry.
Gulp.
I began to suck her blood.
I’d sunk my fangs into her soft, white skin.
No one had to teach me how to suck blood─I just knew.
Precisely as a human fed.
“Guhh─”
Kissshot began to moan.
While her spilt blood returned─her sucked blood didn’t.
It was because I was draining her energy.
One aberration was simply turning against another.
You couldn’t even call it feeding on her.
Sure, feeding on her was what I was doing, but you couldn’t call it that.
All I was doing─was slaying an aberration.
I’d used my body to block Kissshot’s glare─it shouldn’t have made it to Hanekawa.
If I could keep going and suck Kissshot dry─if I could wring every last drop from her, just as she did to me that day─
“Ha.”
Even as she fell backwards, with me leaning over her─Kissshot laughed.
“Haha”Hahaha”Hahahaha”Aahahaha”Hahahahahahaha”Haha”Hahahaha”ha”Hahahahaha”Haha”Ahahaha”Aaaahahahahahahahahaha─!”
So she was going to die laughing.
That was fine with me.
But I had to admit. Her blood─Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade’s blood─tasted better than anything in the world.
I felt like I could go on drinking forever no matter how much of it there was.
I wanted to go on drinking forever.
It was delicious.
Kissshot.
Just like this, without feeling a hint of fulfillment or an inch of accomplishment, but with unfaltering determination─
I will kill you.
The life I once saved─I would now end.
It was my responsibility. But even after she died and I returned to being human, I wouldn’t feel any sense of fulfillment or accomplishment─her death a bare result!
“…Huh?”
And then.
And then, it suddenly came to me.
Was I overlooking something?
If I was─then what was I overlooking?
If it was so important that Hanekawa had to leap out of the P.E. shed to tell me─what in the world could it be?
And why did Kissshot become so flustered? Why did the foolish ramblings of someone she considered no more than “rations” enrage her?
She’d shown so much composure up until then.
Plus, I’d heard her say that before.
“This isn’t thy place to speak.”
That line─I had heard one like it come from Kissshot’s mouth before─
─Negotiator or whatever thou may be─
─Do not speak when it is not thy place to do so─
─Boy.
That was it.
Kissshot had said that to Oshino─but what had we been talking about?
I remembered.
Oshino had said─
─And Heartunderblade, I’m pleased─
─You made Ararag
i your thrall─
─But you do intend─
─To turn him back into a human─
“……!”
I’d pushed Kissshot over and had her trapped between my legs─but suddenly, without thinking, I sat up. Of course, this meant removing my fangs from her neck.
Then I looked at her expression.
I looked at her.
Kissshot’s eyes were still cold but now blank, even seeming a bit cloudy─but she was still able to twist her mouth at me.
“What’s the matter, servant?” she said. “I still have nearly half of my blood left.”
“……”
“While I may not be able to move for now, having lost so much blood, I will recover in no time unless ye make haste.”
She was probably right.
Both about being unable to move and about recovering right away.
But more importantly─
There was something I had to ask her.
I thought I’d asked her my last question─but there was something I needed to ask her.
Even if it might not be a good idea to ask.
“H-Hey. Kissshot.”
“What is it?”
“How…were you going to turn me back into a human?”
Kissshot clicked her tongue and said, “What does it matter to thee now?”
“It does matter to me. It’s important.”
“That damned ration. She should have kept her mouth shut,” Kissshot castigated Hanekawa─then held her tongue.
The castigated Hanekawa─slowly walked toward me and Kissshot. She’d put her sweater back on and retied her scarf. Meanwhile, I could tell by her jiggling breasts, worthy of sound effects, boing boing, were this a manga, that she hadn’t had time to wear her bra.
But Hanekawa seemed not to care as she approached us.
“Miss Heartunderblade,” she said solemnly. “Were you…planning on having Araragi kill you from the very beginning?”
“……”
“So that you could turn Araragi back into a human?”
I’d overlooked something.
What if it hadn’t turned out this way─for example, what if I’d never witnessed Kissshot eating Guillotine Cutter?
How was Kissshot planning on turning me back into a human then? What method existed outside of the one that Hanekawa had discovered?
It had never even occurred to me.
I had overlooked it. Entirely.
“That’s enough foolishness from thee, ration. On what grounds─”
“Then could you please tell me how you were planning on turning Araragi back into a human? I looked it up─but I couldn’t find any other way of turning a vampire back into a human.”
Any other way.
Any way outside of killing one’s master.
Any way outside of causing the master-servant relationship to crumble.
“Hah. As if I would know─I never had any intention of turning this servant of mine back into a human. It was a lie I told to make him gather my arms and legs. I could not tell too many if it was to return to my perfect form─and indeed, I only made him my thrall for my own convenience.”
“That’s not true. You gathered your missing parts because Araragi wouldn’t be able to turn back into a human if you weren’t in your complete state, even if he killed you, right? It wasn’t going to work unless he killed you after you were whole again─”
I thought back to Kissshot’s excitement.
So it wasn’t because she’d returned to her perfect form─but rather because that meant the conditions had been met to turn me back into a human?
“Fool. It was nothing of the sort.”
“If that’s true─then why did you come here?” Hanekawa asked Kissshot in an utterly calm voice.
Predator and prey.
A greater existence and a lesser existence.
But Hanekawa spoke like an equal.
“Araragi had a reason to fight you, but you didn’t. I know you came up with some labored reason like wanting to use your full powers or whatever─but you came here to be killed by Araragi, didn’t you? That was all, wasn’t it? You even made it a fifty-fifty fight─you intentionally provoked him.”
“Ha-Hanekawa─”
“You stay quiet, Araragi,” Hanekawa interrupted me. “Of course, I don’t have any grounds for it─something just seemed strange, that’s all. But just now, when you didn’t try to kill me as I came to put a damper on your fight─that’s when I knew. Your─”
Kissshot had used her vampire eyes.
She blew away everything around Hanekawa.
Yet, she didn’t harm Hanekawa herself.
When Hanekawa had interfered in the same way during my battle with Episode, he didn’t think twice about hurling his cross at her─but Kissshot didn’t attack Hanekawa, the girl she’d called my rations.
All she did was try to intimidate her.
“Your plan is to die.”
“…Ye should have kept thy mouth shut,” Kissshot said, repeating herself. “What good will it do─ye think this servant of mine could kill me after hearing those words?”
“What?”
“As this servant’s mistress, I know quite well─he is the kind of fool who would rescue a vampire on the brink of death. Knowing what I ‘do intend,’ as that boy put it, do ye think this one could suck my blood?”
“W-Well─but─” stammered Hanekawa.
Kissshot gave her a cold look.
A cold look─with her two blank eyes.
“I had thought it would be the hardest step of all─I was vexed by how to make him kill me. That is why I kept mum about the way to turn him back for as long as I could. I was afraid we simply had to plunge into it… But in what I will admit was an unexpected turn of events, the stage was set thanks to Guillotine Cutter. Had I known that eating a single human sufficed to render him so irate, I’d not have worried so.”
Kissshot looked at me before continuing.
“─If only I could have simply been the villain, the despised, and slain thus. There was no need for thee to be privy to my intention.”
“Why not?” I muttered, stupefied.
But at the same time─if I looked at it that way, everything did check out.
“Why would you…want to do that?”
“My servant,” replied Kissshot, “I had been searching for a place to die.”
“A place to die─”
The cause of death for nine-tenths of vampires.
Suicide.
Boredom─killed vampires.
She was─so bored.
“And that is why I came to this country─I had not returned since the death of my first thrall. It was not for sightseeing─”
“B-But, you…”
She didn’t want to die.
That’s what she said─crying and screaming.
Her heart had been stolen─her limbs had been severed─
She’d just barely escaped with her life.
“I thought I was ready to die. That is what I had told myself,” Kissshot said.
But.
“At the very end, I grew scared of death.”
“……”
“The thought that after five hundred years alive, I would vanish─it began to scare me. That thought, that I would be gone, scared me so. That is when ye came along─and when I sought thy help.”
“And─I helped you.”
I hadn’t been moved by any grand notion.
What would happen next, what the future would hold─I’d had no notion.
