Right Arm of the Saint

by Gakuto Mikumo

  But, Nagisa cared nothing for Kojou’s inner conflict.

  “Sorry, Yukina-chan. Please take good care of Kojou-kun. He’s not a very bright older brother.”

  As she made another monologue, she brought Yukina back with her to her own residence. Kojou followed the girls with a sullen face. Dignity as the older brother? No such thing. He was grateful that at least Yukina didn’t act like Nagisa’s pushy invitation bothered her at all.

  Entering her own residence, Nagisa immediately tossed on an apron and began preparing the ingredients.

  As she did so, Kojou led Yukina to his own room.

  Since Nagisa was a clean freak and tidied up without asking, May I? whenever she saw an opening, Kojou could show her his room without any embarrassment, at least.

  Even so, the room was dreary with little in the way of content to begin with. It wasn’t quite at the level of Yukina’s room, but aside from the bed, a desk, and a half-empty bookshelf with old magazines stuffed into it, it was bare.

  “This is… Senpai, you’re a basketball player?”

  Yukina had noticed the album sitting on top of that bookshelf when she asked, apparently a bit surprised.

  The album was a record of Kojou’s time in Basketball Club in junior high school. He’d gotten rid of all his basketball equipment when he’d left the club, but this was the only thing not thrown away.

  “So you know what basketball is, Himeragi? Even though you said a golf club was a type of mace?”

  Kojou spoke in a joking tone. Yukina’s lips twisted in a pout.

  “A city championship is an impressive record.”

  “Well, that was a long time ago.”

  “Was obtaining the power of the Fourth Primogenitor why you gave up basketball, Senpai?”

  Yukina said those words as she looked at him with a serious expression. Kojou shook his head like the issue was tiresome. It felt a bit odd that a whole year had passed since then, he thought.

  “My condition’s got nothin’ to do with that. I quit basketball before then, you see.”

  Yeah, not like I could compete with this body anyway, Kojou thought, laughing at his own expense.

  He had the ability to leap with monstrous strength and the agility to catch a bullet. Using demonic power was the antithesis of sportsmanship. As cheating went, doping scandals had nothing on this.

  But Kojou had quit basketball over a year ago, before he’d become a vampire.

  “Why did you, then?”

  “Really, it’s not that rare a story. I didn’t understand club activity isn’t something you can do by yourself.

  “The point being, I was isolated on the team.”

  “Eh?”

  Watching from the side, Yukina seemed surprised as Kojou talked about it as if it involved someone else. Kojou executed a languid flop onto the bed, making a strained smile as he looked up at the ceiling.

  “Back then, I thought we’d win if I just played hard enough. And till midway, that’s actually how it was. We were what people call a one-man team. Because I was a good player, I really got carried away with myself.”

  Like it was ever gonna work out like that, Kojou thought with a laugh.

  The trigger was the final tournament in junior high. Kojou had been injured in the district qualifiers. He’d taken a hard foul from the opposing team and had been forced off the court midway against his will. Fortunately, they’d had a large lead; Kojou’s injury wasn’t all that severe, either. If they’d won he should’ve been able to play in the next round.

  But the instant Kojou went off the court, the team’s morale collapsed.

  They let the opposing team roar back and build a huge lead, and lost just like that.

  From start to finish, all Kojou could do was watch the process from the bench, dumbfounded, unable to do a thing.

  “More than that, I was shocked at how calmly the other players accepted defeat.”

  Kojou made an offhanded shrug of his shoulders.

  “That’s when I finally realized I was the one who’d taken their willpower away. They figured, even if they didn’t try hard, someone else would win it for them. I made them think I’d always come through, even though the truth was I couldn’t do anything on my own. Not that understanding that means I can do anything about it now.”

  That was why Kojou quit the team, citing the need to recover from his injury. Some of his fellow players remained, but Kojou didn’t continue to play basketball with them, for Kojou reasoned that so long as he was at their side, they’d never change. At any rate, Kojou himself had lost all desire to continue.

  “I don’t think… that it was all your fault, though, Senpai.” Yukina, having silently listened to his story, spoke in an overly serious tone.

  As Yukina did so, Kojou made what seemed like a teasing smile at her.

  “Yeah, well that’s all right. I just lost my motivation all on my own, after all. But…” Then Kojou bared his canine teeth. His eye color changed to red for just a moment. “When this ridiculous Fourth Primogenitor thing got pushed onto me, I did think about it a little. Like if I used these powers, I’d probably be able to solve a bunch of the problems of today’s world. At the very least, I could kill off fiendish criminals and wipe out dirty politicians… Stuff like that.”

  “Senpai. That’s—”

  “I know. That’s no good. Just ’cause a guy like me gets his hands on a bit more power than the next guy doesn’t make fiddling with the world any which way a good thing. If I do something like that, there’ll probably be a reaction coming from somewhere.”

  Yukina exhaled in what seemed like relief. And, as if suddenly realizing something, she raised an eyebrow.

  “Senpai, is that why you hide the fact you’re a vampire and live as an ordinary human being?”

  Well that, too, thought Kojou as he made a vague nod.

  “I don’t need vampire powers anyway, and I don’t want anything to do with ’em if I can avoid it. I’m not cut out to be some hero anyway. Besides, to be honest, these crazy powers I’ve been given are beyond me. I don’t have any faith I can use ’em right.”

  “I see…”

  It’s not that I don’t understand how you feel, thought Yukina as she watched Kojou with sober eyes. Then…

  “But, Senpai… Isn’t that just an excuse to do nothing?”

  “Eh? Er… Is that what you think?”

  An expression came over Kojou like he was hurt.

  “I kinda meant to say something profound there, but, ah…”

  “Hee-hee, I suppose you did. I have a somewhat better opinion of you now, really.”

  “O-okay.”

  “Quite.”

  Yukina made a small giggle.

  “Now then, right now there’s something you have to do, so shall we begin, Senpai? Let’s stop memorizing answers for now. After all, if you can take care of basic formulas you’ll be all right.”

  As Yukina opened one of Kojou’s textbooks, she spoke with the tone of a private tutor older than he was. With a geh, Kojou’s face grimaced, but for some reason, Yukina seemed somewhat amused.

  4

  The supper Nagisa had prepared should have been enough for light servings for seven or eight people, but the three of them exhibited ravenous hunger as they devoured the whole thing. They even managed to finish off the last of the rice gruel broth.

  “Ahh—we sure ate. I can’t move anymore.”

  Nagisa, wearing a thin camisole, flopped onto the living room sofa. When Yukina tried to help clean up after, Nagisa went, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” and coerced her back to her own room; by the time the kitchen was spotless, she seemed to have used up all her strength.

  “Hey, Nagisa. Don’t fall asleep in a place like that. You’ll catch cold.”

  As his little sister happily clutched her tummy, Kojou watched with an incredulous expression as he spoke bluntly. Nagisa waved him off with an annoyed look.

  “Just for a little bit—I’m tired from today’s club
practice, too—ah, Kojou?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Convenience store. Gonna go drink somethin’ so I can stay awake,” Kojou replied while putting on his parka over his loungewear.

  Nagisa, still facedown, raised her face, sounding like it took significant effort.

  “Ahh, buy some ice cream while you’re at it, then. Same one as last time.”

  “You can still eat? …You’ll get fat, right around the gut.”

  “Oh, shut up. I hate it when you say that, Kojou.” Nagisa’s cheeks puffed up as she objected.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  As Kojou thought, She’s angry ’cause she knows I’m right, he tied his shoes and opened the front door. Yukina was standing right in front of him.

  “—Where do you think you’re going at a time like this, Senpai?”

  “Whoa!” Kojou unwittingly cried out. Yukina’s eyes were narrowed, seemingly on guard as she gave Kojou an icy glare.

  “H-Himeragi?!”

  “Yes. What is it?”

  Seeing Yukina tilt her head a bit as she asked, Kojou felt just a little relieved.

  Yukina’s hair was still wet, with water droplets dripping from the tips. Furthermore, the only thing she’d thrown over her bare upper body was her blouse, looking quite defenseless. She didn’t have that guitar case on her back. He wondered if she’d been waiting outside the residence, watching guard the whole time, but apparently that had not been the case.

  She’d probably been in the middle of taking a bath when she’d felt Kojou heading out. No doubt she’d rushed out in a big hurry. That kind of stupidly blind dedication to her work was just the thing the all-too-serious Yukina would do.

  “You don’t actually plan on coming with me? Dressed like that?” Kojou asked as he felt a light headache.

  “It’s my duty to watch you,” Yukina replied with her usual deadpan tone, but even she exhibited a bit of timidity and anxiety.

  Circumstances being what they were, she probably wasn’t even wearing panties under her skirt.

  Kojou shook his head in dismay.

  “Hey, it’s okay. Go…dry your hair and whatever. I’ll wait here till you’re done.”

  “Really?”

  Yukina blinked, looking a bit surprised. Kojou’s face continued to grimace.

  “As if I can take a junior high schooler around looking like that?! I’ll get arrested!!”

  “I—I suppose you’re right. Please come in and wait, then.”

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll wait here. Not like I’m gonna run away.”

  Kojou hid the dejection on his face as he spoke. Any way you sliced it, being alone with a girl coming out of the bath was bad. It cranked the difficulty level too high for Kojou.

  Yukina left him with a “Well, then,” seeming to flee as she returned to her own room.

  Kojou looked up at the sky from the apartment hallway. He innocently counted the stars. After all, he had a feeling that he’d be assaulted by vampiric impulses if he visualized Yukina changing clothes instead.

  Finally, the door to Yukina’s room opened once again, and Yukina came out, fully dressed this time around. She indeed had that guitar case over her back.

  Maybe she doesn’t have any clothes aside from school uniforms, Kojou suddenly thought. I’m gonna have to take her shopping sometime soon. While having that entirely natural thought, Kojou realized something and sank lower.

  He felt like he’d brought a small, high-maintenance pet home.

  “So, where are we going, Senpai?” Yukina asked, ignorant of Kojou’s inner conflict.

  Kojou got in the elevator as he replied, “Convenience store. Don’t tell me you don’t know what a convenience store is?”

  “Yes, I know what it is, but I’ve never gone to one in the middle of the night like this.”

  Yukina spoke with a bounce in her voice, as if it contained expectation without any uneasiness mixed in. She had an expression like a girl keeping a prank secret from her parents. Don’t expect that much from a convenience store, Kojou thought with a strained smile.

  “Sorry about earlier. You must be exhausted.”

  “Eh?”

  “Suppertime. Nagisa was really worked up.”

  “No, that was fun. The pot of stew was delicious, too.”

  Yukina smiled with what looked like a little blush. Well, I’m glad, Kojou thought as he smiled.

  “We used to take turns cooking way back, but Nagisa’s way better at it lately, so…”

  “It’s nice, being a brother and sister. I don’t have any family, so I kind of admire it.”

  Yukina conveyed that with a casual tone.

  “Don’t have a family?”

  Kojou looked at the side of Yukina’s face in surprise. “No,” replied Yukina, shaking her head without showing any real sentiment.

  “Everyone at High God Forest is an orphan. The organization gathers children with potential together from all over the country and raises them to become Counter-Demon Attack Mages.”

  “That so…?”

  Yukina’s unexpectedly weighty personal history left Kojou at a loss for words.

  “Then you were raised from the start to be an Attack Mage…?”

  “Yes. Er, but it’s not that I was lonely from not having family, or anything like that. All the staff at High God Forest are very kind; I didn’t mind the Sword Shaman training, either.”

  Yukina amended herself in a hurry. It didn’t feel to him that Yukina was lying; Kojou accepted her words at face value. He figured Yukina couldn’t have learned martial arts at a high enough level to utterly dominate demons if she’d hated the training, anyway. But—

  “What’s…a Sword Shaman?”

  Kojou tilted his head at the unfamiliar term.

  “An Attack Mage who serves High God Forest. I think it’s supposed to mean a shrine maiden trained in the art of the sword, though.”

  Yukina spoke with an unsure look. Apparently she didn’t really understand it herself.

  “Shrine maiden… Hey, Himeragi, does that mean you can do prayers and tell fortunes?”

  “I can go through the motions. It’s not really my specialty, though…”

  “Hmm.”

  I see, Kojou thought, somehow accepting it. Now that she mentioned it, Yukina seemed prim and proper but had the air of someone who found stiff formalities difficult.

  Either way, you could call her animalistic, or rather, the type to move based on instinct and intuition. Perhaps those were the very qualities that qualified her to be a Sword Shaman to begin with.

  “Senpai… You were thinking something rather rude just now, weren’t you?”

  She unnerved Kojou with the timing of her question, as if she’d been looking right through his mind.

  “Er, no, not at all.”

  “I am a rather skilled medium, you see. It is useless to lie to me.”

  “Eh…?! You really are like an animal…”

  “So you were indeed thinking something like that…”

  At some point during that conversation, the two of them arrived at the convenience store that was their destination.

  Island South, the main residential Gigafloat where Kojou and Yukina’s apartment complex was located, did not have many people walking about at night. Even so, things were fairly lively as they approached the train station.

  Fast food and coffee shops. Even manga cafés and game centers—

  “Ah…”

  When they passed in front of the game center, Yukina suddenly came to a halt. That drew an over-the-shoulder look from Kojou. There was no way she didn’t know what a game center was, for goodness’ sakes, but…

  “Ah, sorry. It’s nothing.”

  “Something about that crane game there?”

  Kojou asked as he realized Yukina was fixated on a cabinet at the front of the store. Yukina tilted her head a little.

  “So that’s a…crane game. It has a Nekoma-tan in it…”

  “Nekoma-t
an? That mascot plushie thingie?”

  “Yes. Er… It was really popular at my old school.”

  Yukina made a small nod. It was a two-headed cat mascot waving a paw like a beckoning cat.

  It featured a tail split in two, which probably accounted for the name. Yukina tried to speak like it wasn’t anything special to her, but she looked at the mascot in the glass case with shining, glittering eyes.

  “Well, we can nab it if it’s just that.”

  A slightly strained smile came over Kojou as he took out a five-hundred-yen piece. Yukina looked up at Kojou with a surprised expression.

  “What do you mean by nab? You can’t mean…”

  “No, no. I don’t mean that in the sense of stealing; I mean, that’s what the machine’s for.”

  This said, Kojou inserted the coin into the game machine. As Kojou used button controls to make the crane’s arm move, Yukina grasped the general idea, too. She gave the movements of the arm a much more serious look than when she’d fought those demons.

  Since he’d been with Nagisa when she’d made plenty of high-handed requests, Kojou’s skill with crane games was pretty decent. With precision, he placed the arm where it could easily grab, targeted the individual plushie, and lowered the crane.

  Yukina held her breath as she watched the arm’s unfaltering aim as it gripped the mascot, pulling it up and carrying to the drop box. Finally, the pseudo-beckoning cat mascot plushie dropped into the box. That moment…

  “—You two there. You’re Saikai Academy students, aren’t you? What are you doing here at this hour?”

  When Kojou and Yukina heard the calm voice coming from behind, they froze as if zapped by electricity.

  Geh. Kojou sucked in his breath as he saw the silhouette reflected by the game machine’s glass.

  There stood Natsuki Minamiya. He didn’t need to get a good look at her face; no one else on the Island of Everlasting Summer was crazy enough to wear something as stifling as a frilled dress. The parasol she held raised was out of place at night, but it seemed she was in the middle of making the rounds to give students proper guidance.

  “You there, the boy. I think I’ve seen you before. Pull your hood down and turn toward me.”