Right Arm of the Saint

by Gakuto Mikumo

  The woman’s words struck Yukina speechless for a while.

  “The Fourth Primogenitor is in Japan…?!”

  “This is why we have called you here today, Yukina Himeragi. In the name of the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency, we hereby assign you watch the Fourth Primogenitor.”

  Though calm, the woman informed her of this in a tone that left no room for dissent.

  “I am to…watch the Fourth Primogenitor?”

  “Yes. And, should you determine that the target of your observation is a dangerous being, you are to eliminate him with extreme prejudice.”

  “Eliminate…?!”

  Yukina was shaken and at a loss for words.

  She was afraid of the Fourth Primogenitor. She was also anxious about being entrusted with such an important duty. Her training had not been shoddy, but in the end, Yukina was only an apprentice. She was not conceited enough to seriously think she could defeat a Primogenitor. In the first place, a Primogenitor was said to possess the combat power of an entire national army; they were monsters of the first rank.

  But, unless someone did it, calamity would strike, and a great many people would lose their lives.

  “Take this, Yukina Himeragi.”

  The woman presented something through the gap under the raised bamboo screen. The bonfire made the object, a single spear, shine as it floated up in the darkness. Yukina knew its name.

  “This is…”

  “Mechanical Demon-Purging Assault Spear Mark Seven, also known as ‘Schneewalzer.’ Its name is ‘Snowdrift Wolf.’”

  When the woman asked, “So you know of it, do you?” Yukina nodded vaguely.

  Schneewalzers were weapons with special powers developed by the Lion King Agency for confronting demons. The spearhead, crafted with refined metalworking techniques, had an elegant silhouette resembling a state-of-the-art fighter aircraft. Truly, mechanical spear was an appropriate name for it.

  However, since the weapon employed a priceless ancient spear as its core, it could not be mass-produced; it was said that only three existed in the entire world. Either way, it was safe to say that they were the mightiest of the secret weapons at the Lion King Agency’s disposal.

  “You’re giving this…to me?”

  As she accepted the spear offered to her, Yukina asked with an expression of disbelief.

  However, the woman exhaled with a heavy heart.

  “Against a Primogenitor, I would prefer a more powerful weapon to grant you, but this is the mightiest of arms we can provide you in the present circumstance. Please take it.”

  “Yes, of course…but…”

  As Yukina spoke, a perplexed expression came over her.

  The spear had not been all that had been presented through the gap in the bamboo screen. Wrapped in vinyl, there was also a brand-new school uniform ensemble, neatly folded and hand-delivered. Its base colors were white and blue, with a sailor-collared blouse and a pleated skirt. It seemed to be a girls’ summer uniform for junior high school.

  “Er, what’s this?”

  “A school uniform. It was procured to match with your height.”

  “Er… What I mean is, why a school uniform?”

  “Your target for observation is a student at a school with this uniform.”

  “Wha?”

  Yukina was a bit confused, unable to comprehend what she was being told.

  “…The target for observation…the Fourth Primogenitor, is a student? Huh?”

  “Saikai Private Academy High School, first year, class B, seat number one. That is the present social status for the Fourth Primogenitor, Kojou Akatsuki. So as you see, we do not have anyone available who can approach him peaceably, save one exception: you, Yukina Himeragi.”

  “Kojou Akatsuki… The person in this picture is the Fourth Primogenitor…? What?!”

  Yukina’s eyes widened as she looked down at the picture that had been tossed onto the floor.

  She somehow felt the strained smiles of the Three Saints through the bamboo screen. Only now did Yukina finally understand why an inexperienced Sword Shaman such as her had been selected for such an important mission.

  “Let us amend our orders, Yukina Himeragi. From today forward, you are to make every effort to contact and then observe him. The formalities for your transfer to Saikai Academy have already been taken care of. You are dismissed.”

  Leaving no room for any response to their words, the auras of the elders behind the bamboo screen vanished.

  Yukina, now the only person remaining in the hall of worship, forgot even to breathe, simply continuing to stare blankly at the spear in her hands.

  Fourth Primogenitor. Transfer. Contact. Watch. Eliminate. She wondered if she’d become involved in a terrible disaster. With such thoughts, Yukina let out a small sigh, still beside herself.

  Though divination was not her forte, she would not know her intuition had been correct until a little later…

  CHAPTER ONE

  DEMON SANCTUARY

  1

  Powerful sun rays poured down mercilessly from the red-dyed western sky.

  “So hot… I’m gonna burn. To a crisp. I’m gonna be ash…”

  A family restaurant, in the afternoon. Kojou Akatsuki muttered weakly as he lay facedown on the window-side table, utterly exhausted.

  He was a high school student, complete with uniform. Aside from the hooded white parka, there was nothing you could really say stood out; just another male student. Thanks to the languid expression he made with his face and his narrowed, sleepy eyes, it felt like he was sulking.

  It was the last Monday of August. The weather was clear. The external temperature had already surpassed the internal temperature of the human body, and even here on the verge of sunset, there was no sense that it was dropping whatsoever. Even with the air conditioner on full blast, the cold air didn’t seem to have enough margin to reach all the way to Kojou’s seat inside the shop.

  As murderous levels of ultraviolet rays penetrated the paper-thin blinds, a listless Kojou glared questioningly across the table.

  “What time is it?”

  What escaped from Kojou’s lips was a murmur, as if speaking to himself. One of his friends, sitting in a seat across the table mixed a laugh with his tone of voice as he replied.

  “It’ll be four thirty soon, in…three minutes and twenty-two seconds.”

  “…Geez, already? Tomorrow’s make-up exam is nine a.m., right…?”

  “If you don’t sleep a wink tonight, that’s still seventeen hours and three minutes. Gonna make it?”

  The other person sitting at the table asked in a lighthearted, not-my-problem sort of voice. Kojou made no reply. He directed an expressionless gaze at the pile of textbooks for a while.

  “Hey… I’ve been kinda thinking about this lately.”

  “Mm?”

  “Why do I have to take this huge pile of make-up exams?”

  Kojou muttered his question as if to himself, and his two friends looked up at him.

  Kojou had been ordered to take a total of nine make-up exams, including two for both English and math, plus a phys ed half marathon on top of that. Certainly there weren’t many souls who had to go through this on the last weekend of summer.

  “…I mean, the range of questions asked in these make-up exams is too broad. I haven’t even had classes in this stuff yet. And supplemental lessons seven days a week—what the hell? Do my teachers have some kind of grudge against me?!”

  The two friends glanced at each other’s face as the young man bitterly cried out. They wore a male and female uniform, respectively, from the same school. They shared a brief glance at each other, as if to say, What’s he going on about now?

  “Er… Yeah, they do have a grudge.”

  It was the male student who replied, twirling a mechanical pencil round and round, headphones hanging around his neck, hair short and combed spikily back. His name was Yaze Motoki.

  “You just casually skipped out on their clas
ses all that time, day after day. Of course they think you’re dissing them. …Plus you were absent without permission for the tests before summer, too.”

  Aiba Asagi smiled, gracefully touching up her nails as she spoke.

  She had a gorgeous hairstyle and a uniform decorated right up to the limit of school regulations. Rather mysteriously, she still didn’t come off as overly gaudy, perhaps because she had good taste. At any rate, she was a girl whose appearance stood out.

  She’d be an undisputed beauty if she’d kept silent, but perhaps due to always having that smirk on her face, she wasn’t very charming. Perhaps that’s why being with her felt like being with one of the boys.

  “…But that was an act of God. There were circumstances! For starters, I told that homeroom teacher over and over that my physical condition makes it hard for me to take tests first thing in the morning…”

  Kojou made his excuses with an irritated tone. The thin lines of blood in his eyes were not out of anger, but from simple sleep deprivation.

  “What do you mean, physical condition? Got hay fever or something, Kojou?”

  Asagi inquired curiously. Kojou, realizing he’d made a verbal slip, halted his tongue.

  “Ah no. I mean I’m a…night person. It’s hard waking up in the morning.”

  “How’s that a physical condition issue? It’s not like you’re a vampire.”

  “Y…yeah. Ha-ha.”

  Kojou smiled stiffly as he made a verbal parry. Vampires were not a rare sight in this city. The very fact that you were just as likely to bump into one as a hay fever patient was the real problem for Kojou.

  “I love Natsuki-chan, though. She has wonderful taste. And she’s letting the insufficient-attendance thing slide with the extra lessons, isn’t she?” As Asagi spoke, she sipped her juice, making small slurping sounds.

  “I guess,” Kojou agreed.

  “Plus, I’m taking pity on you and tutoring you, too.”

  “Don’t apply for sainthood when you’re eating whatever you like on someone else’s dime.”

  Asagi glared vilely at Kojou across the top of the textbooks piled before her. There was no sign of where it all fit in her slender body, but Asagi was a huge eater beyond all bounds of common sense. He wished he’d remembered that when she’d told him I’ll teach you how to study, so treat me to lunch.

  “Just to say it, you’re paying for Asagi’s lunch with the money I lent you. You’d better pay up, Kojou.”

  Yaze pointed that out in a calm voice. Rich man’s son or not, he was really uptight about this kind of thing.

  “I get it. Dammit… And you call yourselves warm-blooded human beings?”

  “No, no, any way you slice it, it’s he who thinks he can shirk his debts who is the villain…and, besides, talking about hot blood vs. cold blood, that’s discrimination. Better watch yourself.”

  “On this island, at least,” Yaze said with a cynical laugh.

  “What a bothersome world…not that they give a damn, though.”

  At the very least they don’t give a damn about me, Kojou thought with a sigh.

  “Aw, look at the time. Well, I’m off. Job and all.”

  Asagi gazed at her cell phone, and she gulped the last of her juice all at once as she got up. Kojou looked up at her.

  “What was it, again? Part-time at the Gigafloat Management Corporation…?”

  “Yep. Security division computer maintenance. Good stuff.”

  After acting like she was tapping a keyboard in midair, Asagi waved with a “Later!” and left the restaurant. Her carefree tone was like someone heading out to work at the cash register at a grocery store, but the Management Corp’s security division was no place for an ordinary person to enter.

  “I’m always thinking it, but it’s totally unfair for a genius programmer to have those looks and that personality. It’s still hard to believe, but… Yeah, her grades were way up there since she was a kid.”

  Yaze rested his chin on his hands as he gazed at Asagi as she departed.

  Yaze and Asagi had known each other since before they’d been in primary school. They’d lived on this island for more than a decade, making them an older generation of Itogami City residents than Kojou’s. It hadn’t even been twenty years since this city, built atop the artificial island, had been completed.

  “If it means getting tutored for the tests, anything’s good.”

  Kojou spoke without raising his face. Yaze observed Kojou, his tone very casual.

  “Actually, I didn’t expect Asagi to tutor you. She hates that kind of thing.”

  “Hates it? Why?”

  “She hates people thinking she’s smart, she’s a crammer, and so on. It doesn’t look like it, but she had a tough time about it as a kid.”

  “Huh… I didn’t know that.”

  Kojou spoke with a blunt tone while a complicated factorization problem was giving him fits.

  It’d been four years since Kojou had moved to Itogami City. It was right after he’d entered junior high. Soon after, he got to know Yaze and Asagi; they’d hung out together every so often ever since. He didn’t remember what brought it on, but his memory held that Asagi had spoken to him first.

  “She didn’t make one complaint about teaching me, though. She let me copy most of her homework this time, too.”

  “Oh ho. Quite mysterious. I wonder why you’re a special case, Kojou. You ever think about that?”

  Yaze made an exaggerated tilt of his neck, making what seemed to be a pointed cough.

  However, Kojou only replied, “Not really,” and shook his head. “I mean, I’m paying her back in every way she asked. Treating her to lunch, daily expenses, pushing her cleaning chores onto me… I’ve had it pretty tough here, too.”

  Yaze dropped his shoulders in resignation, his eyes saying, They’re both hopeless. Kojou raised his face at his friend’s odd behavior.

  “Something wrong?”

  “No, it’s nothing. Guess I’ll head out, too.”

  “Huh?”

  “No, just I’m done copying the homework, and Asagi isn’t here, so studying like this is meaningless. I’m only taking an extra test in one subject, so I should manage with just tonight to study. Anyway, hang in there.”

  Kojou gazed up with an absentminded look as his friend put his things in order and rose up with a “Later!”

  Apparently, while Kojou had been adrift in turmoil Yaze had finished shrewdly copying his own slice of the homework. On the other hand, Kojou was largely unable to grasp his own homework whatsoever. Since this went well beyond simple preparations for a make-up exam, that was only natural, but the visible, overwhelming disparity was sufficient to smash Kojou’s fragile heart to pieces.

  “I don’t even feel like trying…”

  Now left all alone in the family restaurant, Kojou slumped over the table once more.

  He realized he was actually quite hungry. But Kojou’s wallet had no margin left for another order at the moment. The ability of all-you-can-drink soda to fool his empty stomach had finally hit its limit.

  The popular image was that at least vampires could get by on drinking wine or tomato juice alone, but in actual fact, they got hungry and ate solid food like anyone else; he felt let down somehow. At any rate, sleepiness during daylight aside, being able to go have a normal life was a blessing.

  Kojou, still ghastly pale, gazed vaguely at the pile of study problems.

  Suddenly, he remembered something he’d heard during class. Among the various life-forms that evolved, those with the highest probability of survival were the species best adapted to their environment, and accordingly, the present survivors are the children of those best adapted—according to theory, anyway.

  The logic of survival through adaptation was known as natural selection.

  Some thought it was too simple, but the theory was widely accepted.

  To put it another way, the species that had been naturally weeded out were those that had not adapted to their e
nvironment.

  The same logic could be applied to the heroes of old, with power rivaling the gods in their hands, and similar species with supernatural powers that had not survived.

  They had not adapted to their environment.

  Kojou Akatsuki understood that very well.

  No matter how much power you possess, no matter how resilient your flesh, even if you were called the mightiest vampire on Earth, such powers counted for nothing in modern society.

  It couldn’t even help him finish a single sheet of problems covered by the make-up exam—

  “Guess I’ll go home… Hope Nagisa didn’t forget to make something to eat.”

  As Kojou muttered to himself, he stuffed his textbooks and problem sheets into his satchel, picking up the check as he stood up. He paid up at the cash register. His wallet, which always left him feeling dismayed, contained only a little small change now. At this rate he wouldn’t even have money to pay for breakfast tomorrow.

  What kind of excuse should he make to borrow money from his little sister? …As Kojou thought seriously about it, he made his way to the restaurant’s exit. Then he suddenly halted. His eyes narrowed from the dazzling, setting sun.

  Right in front of the family restaurant. Toward the intersection.

  A lone girl stood amid the lighting.

  A female student, in uniform, carrying a black guitar case over her shoulder.

  She stood without a word with the sun at her back.

  The girl continued to stand, not moving an inch, as if she’d been waiting there for Kojou.

  2

  Itogami Island was an artificial island floating in the middle of the Pacific, some three hundred and thirty kilometers south of Tokyo. It was a completely man-made city, built from a linked series of giant floating constructs known as Gigafloats.

  Its total area was approximately a hundred and eighty square kilometers. Total population was about five hundred and sixty thousand. Administratively, it was known as Itogami City, and was part of the greater Tokyo metropolis, but in reality it was a special administrative district with an independent political structure.

  Thanks to the influence of a warm current, the climate was gentle, with temperatures averaging above twenty degrees Celsius even in the middle of winter. It was located in the tropics: an island of everlasting summer.