by Nisioisin
Maybe I was unfeeling.
This situation.
Maybe I needed to be blaming Shinobu more, blaming myself more than I was.
But, somehow.
Yes, somehow.
The scale was just too big for the mind to grasp─a town where literally not a soul is to be seen during the day becoming infested with zombies at night was pure ridiculousness, and at the risk of being taken the wrong way, it all seemed like a joke to me.
History, fate, the world.
I just wasn’t equipped to handle stuff of that order.
Becoming a vampire, time slipping.
I’m still only a high school student.
Fate.
Not to mention reality itself─I don’t have the capacity to stand up to all that.
It was a lost cause.
“Shinobu.”
“Aye.”
“I don’t know if it’ll be a year down the line, or ten years, or what, but at some point I’ll probably lose my grip and try to blame you for destroying the world. But when I do, I won’t be in my right mind. So please don’t take it to heart, just let it go. Please just placate me if I get hysterical.”
“I understand,” Shinobu nodded. Solemnly.
“Okay. So, if we don’t need to buy clothes, then there’s not much we do need. I guess human beings can get by with surprisingly little, if need be. What was it, ‘Consider the lilies how they grow’? Though you and I are both half vampire. Anyway, what do you say we forget about the bookstore for the moment and borrow some educational materials from the high school on the way home?”
We’d do that.
Who knew if the high school, or the college I’d been planning on attending, was still even standing, but─thinking of what Hanekawa and Senjogahara would say.
Not only was it pointless, it was a complete waste of time, nothing more than an escape from reality, but I wanted to continue studying for just a little while longer.
To me.
That was my summer homework.
Then─“Hm?”
I stopped walking.
In front of a certain display case, on the third floor of the supermarket─I wasn’t even putting things in my basket anymore and was just ambling along, but in front of that display case, in an area with summertime merchandise, I stopped.
Stopped and─
“What is it, my lord?”
“Nothing, just…”
Without being fully aware of what I was doing, I reached out towards the display case─and took it in my hand. Come to think of it, I hadn’t done so once this summer─actually, for much longer than that.
So.
“There’s something I want to try.”
025
The thing awaiting my outstretched hand was a set of fireworks.
And not sparklers like the kind you hold in your hand, proper fireworks that you launch into the sky. Truthfully, I would have preferred something even larger, which I probably could have found if I searched in earnest (if I scoured the yellow pages for a pyrotechnician, for instance), but it seemed reasonable to try this first.
What was I planning? Well, fireworks have no utility other than being set off, do they? I wasn’t considering using the energy of those fireworks to travel into the past or anything.
I was just thinking─they could serve as a signal.
A distress signal.
Well, maybe not exactly─but they could serve in place of a signal flare to say, I’m here, there’s a person here.
Here we go with another manga reference by way of explanation, but I’m pretty sure that in The Great Adventure of Dai, the heroes do something similar in the ruins of Papnika. They use an actual signal flare, but I wasn’t feeling so zealous that I was going to find some military warehouse to raid for supplies. Fireworks would have to do.
“What wilt thou, by launching such a thing? Though ’tis a fine way to ornament summer’s end─”
“It would really be something, wouldn’t it, just the two of us enjoying the fireworks together.”
If Shinobu wasn’t actually suspicious of my behavior, which may have seemed overly carefree from a certain perspective, she at least seemed to think it odd, so I gave a proper explanation.
“At first glance the world appears to be in total ruin, but possibly, just possibly, couldn’t someone have survived? You know…someone living in hiding, in fear of the multitudes of zombies who appear at night.”
“Hmm…I take thy point,” Shinobu concurred. “Methinks the chances are incredibly slim, but…might it yet be possible? If a soul but waited out the few days of vampiric proliferation which began on the night of June the fourteenth…’twould not be impossible to survive the subsequent zombie infestation. Their numbers are great, but their movements sluggish. And their senses of sight and smell appear to be inferior to those of humankind─indeed, a few people…nay, ’twould not be surprising if a few thousand, maybe tens of thousands, had survived, scattered here and there across the globe.”
“I don’t think that’s realistic.” Not wanting to cling to any outlandish hopes, and probably right not to, my tone might’ve been more flippant than necessary. “I don’t believe anyone could live through the transformation of all humankind into vampires, and their subsequent zombified nightstalking. After they end up in that form, those zombies recall only their goal to destroy humanity, right? Then they couldn’t allow anyone to survive─oh, I’ve been meaning to ask, if people who get bitten by vampires turn into vampires, what happens to people who get bitten by zombies?”
“They turn into zombies rather than vampires. And walk the night─slaves to my dear departed self.”
“Okay─then it’s settled. Here goes nothing.”
“Here goes nothing, indeed. Even so,” said Shinobu, looking at the fireworks in my hand, “the flare and report of such commercially available fireworks will be limited in their reach?”
“Sure, but it’s all we’ve got. So just think of it as a regular old fireworks display.”
“Hmm.”
I don’t know if Shinobu actually thought it was worth trying, or just hopeless, but at least she didn’t object.
And after all.
Given the massive amount of time we had to kill from here on out, why object to a little diversion?
She may even have been excited about a fireworks display.
I settled on that unpronounceable park as the site─since there was a lot of open space there.
And not much in the way of playground equipment.
Speaking of which, even eleven years in the past, the park hadn’t offered much in the way of playground equipment─so in that place’s case, at least, they hadn’t been removed for safety reasons.
The ruins of the abandoned cram school would have some nostalgic resonance, permeated with memories as it was, but the area was so overgrown that we’d start a fire if anything went awry.
As much as it was abandoned and about to collapse at any moment, I still couldn’t forgive myself if I burned down that building packed so full of everyone’s memories.
Unthinkable.
The flames might be more visible than a few fireworks, but even the Grocer Oshichi wouldn’t pull such a pyromaniac stunt.
So the only candidates I could come up with were the school grounds and that park. I opted in favor of the latter based purely on proximity.
Or maybe out of emotional investment.
“If it shall be so, my lord, there is yet one aspect of the matter on which I would have thee heed my counsel.”
“Hm? Counsel?”
“Fret not, the distress signal itself is well and good.” Shinobu paused for a while before continuing, “I cannot believe ’twould be so, but…surely thou dost not intend to launch these fireworks at night.”
“Oh.”
“How wouldst thou amuse thyself with them in the midst of a town overrun with zombies?”
“…”
I couldn’t, could I.
An excellent point.
How could I purposely send up fireworks from our position when it would call them right to us?
It would be suicidal.
“Then the fireworks display is canceled, I guess. Sure, I wanted to use it as a distress signal, but I also thought it might be fun─”
That said, how should we spend the night? It wouldn’t be safe inside the house─they say true vampires can’t enter someone else’s home without permission, but these were zombies we were dealing with.
They might just blithely ignore that rule─and even if it did apply to them, a Karen or Tsukihi zombie would still be able to enter the Araragi home.
If Karen was a zombie, was she still strong?
If Tsukihi was a zombie…um?
What happened when she became a zombie?
I mean, she was a…
Hrmm?
“Nay, my lord, there is no need to cancel the fireworks display outright. I merely wished to suggest that if we cannot hold it at night, we might hold it during the day.”
“…”
Well, she was right, but still.
Vampires are weak against the sun, so they can’t do much except at night, likewise the zombies─she was absolutely right, but still.
“That’s not quite how I had pictured it…”
But with our safety in mind, maybe there was no other choice.
Even if we braved the risk and sent up the fireworks at night, any survivors in the vicinity probably wouldn’t come out while the zombies were strutting their stuff─
Perhaps setting them off during the day was the right idea after all.
“At least,” I said, looking up at the heavens. Today again, the sky was crystal clear and blue, and the sun was blinding─bright enough to really burn. “At least let’s wait for a day that’s cloudy enough for the fireworks to be visible a little bit farther off…”
The plan just kept deviating more and more from normal fireworks, I realized as I spoke. Choosing to set them off during the day, and actively hoping for bad weather… That was truly perverse.
“Well, since searching for survivors is the number one goal, so be it,” I concluded, with a certain bitterness, but also with unadulterated anticipation at the prospect of lighting off some fireworks for the first time in forever.
Even in this ruined world.
And that anticipation became reality three days later─dates didn’t mean much in a ruined world, but according to the calendar it was Saturday, August twenty-sixth.
An ideally overcast day.
The kind of wonderfully overcast day that promised rain if we waited any longer, the clouds having gone from gray to black─perfectly suited for fireworks, better than anyone could hope for…
During the intervening three days, Shinobu and I had slept in the Araragi residence all day long, and chatted away in the sky all night long. While she’d regained a great deal of her power, staying aloft for a whole night did seem to be something of a burden to her, so we were probably going to have to work out another plan sooner rather than later─but I will report here that those night flights with Shinobu were really amazing.
Three days and three nights.
What Shinobu and I chatted about during that time shall remain secret.
And three days later.
The day of the fireworks display.
Thinking back, I’d always left it to Karen and Tsukihi, so this was actually the first time I was setting these things off. I stabilized them with some handy stones as per the instructions, lit the fuse with a lighter, and got the hell out of there.
I was worried that they might be too damp or too old to work properly, having sat on the shelf for quite some time, but as luck would have it─well, these were fireworks that even grade schoolers could use (under their parents’ supervision, of course), so I couldn’t possibly bungle it─the coronas of light blossomed splendidly.
True, it was daytime.
And it was cloudy. Though it was actually too dull of a display to be termed splendid─
“Tamayaaaaaa!”
“Kagiyaaaaaa!”
“By the by,” asked Shinobu, “why do they cry that out at a fireworks display?”
“Both Tamaya and Kagiya were fireworks shops during the Edo period.”
“Ah ha! So they were, so they were. I heard rumors of them whilst overseas.”
“Why does she pretend to know everything…”
“But why cry out ‘tamaya, kagiya’ at fireworks made by other shops?”
“Well, it’s like back in the day when people called a portable tape player a Walkman no matter what brand it was.”
“Walkmen. They recently went out of production, did they not? Aye, they did seem to be all the rage. But how does that work out for the other shops?”
“Probably lights a fire under their asses.”
“Works for me.”
Amidst that sort of banter.
We lit off one firework after another.
Every single one from the display shelf at the supermarket. We thought of dividing them up and doing a few smaller events, but since it was probably meaningless in the first place, we didn’t feel like going through the whole rigmarole more than once.
If we were going to do it, we might as well go all out.
As all out as we could with such dull fireworks.
“Tamayaaaaaa!”
“Kagiyaaaaaa!”
I said every single one, but given that it was a provincial supermarket, there hadn’t been that many to begin with, and in the end the whole event was over in under an hour.
Over all too soon.
As unnecessary as it might be, let me give you a quick rundown of the visuals here: Shinobu and I were wearing traditional Japanese attire for the occasion. You’ve gotta wear yukata to a fireworks display, we figured, so it was a conventional, not to say an almost mischievous dress code, but Shinobu in her little-blond-girl-in-a-yukata guise gave me an unexpected lump in my throat.
“…Thou canst leave out the little girl part.”
“I told you not to read my thoughts!”
“’Tis novel to see thee in a yukata as well. Thou art always dressed in a hoodie or in thy school uniform.”
“Not always!”
“Well, everyone, are you popular?”
“Stop imitating the Super-Popular Class President.”
“’Tis only a promo spot, yet ’tis pretty cool.”
“Sure…”
It was impossible to ignore.
That vibe.
By the way, the yukata Shinobu was wearing owed to her ability to create matter, but I’d found mine in the house. At some point my Japanese clothing-obsessed little sister Tsukihi had picked it out for me.
As for the fact that I was wearing my school shoes, let’s not be too fussy.
“Man,” I said, “it does feel good every once in a while.”
“This ought to make up for thy exam prep preventing thee from attending the summer festival.”
“Without food stalls and Bon dancing, though, it’s a pretty lonely festival─well, wanna wait here until nightfall and see what happens?”
“Aye.”
“No matter what, let’s not get our hopes up. Again, I have a hard time believing anyone could still be alive with the town this way, and even if, hope against hope, anyone actually escaped the menace and is living in hiding somewhere, I have a hard time believing those fireworks would draw them out. When humanity has been annihilated by vampires, it’s only natural to be wary. It’d be normal to expect a trap. And─”
“Enough.”
A grinding sensation.
On my foot.
It was Shinobu.
Since proper wooden sandals were strapped to her feet, I took a huge amount of damage.
“Aaaaaaagghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Canst not be so painful as to warrant such a shriek.” Shinobu rolled her eyes as she removed her foot. “’Tis no good to expect too much, but a surfeit
of pessimism will accomplish naught. If thou hast the time to lament the futility of it, instead think upon how best to communicate with any survivors who possess the nerve to answer thy summons. It may not be only middle school girls with whom thou must deal.”
