“I didn’t lay a hand on her! That’s just Yume misunderstanding a bunch of things!” Kojou insisted, making a sullen face like a sulking child.
It hadn’t even been thirty minutes since Kojou and the others had encountered Gajou Akatsuki in the park. However, as soon as Kojou saw his father’s face, he decided to return home immediately. He was fearful of Gajou coming into contact with his friends. Even setting Yaze and Asagi aside, the real danger lay with Yume. If he carelessly let those two meet, there was no telling what ideas Gajou might put into her head.
However, by the time Gajou raised his voice to Kojou and the others, he’d apparently already finished gathering all kinds of information, not only about his connection to Yume but all kinds of other blackmail material to tease Kojou, which accounted for the disheartened look that overcame Kojou.
“…Misunderstanding, you say.” Gajou slurped on the delicious-looking soba noodles Nagisa had brought him and gave a suggestive smile. “Well, don’t worry about it. I mean, Mimori and I are over ten years apart. Even if they call you a criminal, just put up with it for a decade and it’s cool.”
“Who’s a criminal…?! And you shut up—you’re making this more complicated!”
Kojou’s lips twisted in annoyance at his father’s off-the-wall consolation. However, Gajou paid no heed to his son’s objections, shifting an amiable gaze toward Yukina.
For some reason, Gajou seemed to have taken a liking to Yukina. He’d overruled her polite refusal, insisting she join them at their residence.
“Incidentally, Himeragi, was it? Sorry for earlier. I said all sorts of rude things, like jealousy, stalking, and so on.”
“N-not at all. I did not mind, so please.”
Yukina looked a little tense as she shook her head at Gajou’s words.
“What the hell were you saying to a girl you just met?” Kojou complained, clutching his head.
Even so, Gajou displayed not even a single smidgen of remorse as he warmly patted Kojou’s shoulder and said, “I really am sorry. I didn’t think an idiot like this would have a girlfriend as cute as you.”
“Eh?!”
Yukina stiffened, unable to react to Gajou’s brazen remark. Kojou was just as frozen. Gajou, off on his own, seemed in high spirits.
“I really have to say, though, what do you see in a guy like Kojou?” Gajou asked, narrowing his eyes. “A pretty girl like you should have any number of better choices to pick from—”
“Hey, Himeragi’s not my girlfriend! Lay off with the stupid delusions, you old fart!”
Kojou yelled right back at his father. Gajou continued sipping soba noodles, pretending not to hear a word.
“D-delusions…” Yukina, hearing Kojou’s statement, narrowed the corners of her eyes in a grimace.
However, Kojou did not notice the change in Yukina as he said, “Himeragi’s just my junior at school. She coincidentally lives next door to us. You didn’t know because you haven’t been back here!”
“Hmm. Just your junior, huh…”
A leering grin came over Gajou as he crossed his legs. He shooed away Kojou, glaring at him at point-blank range, like an annoyance as he said:
“Incidentally, Himeragi, have you done it with Kojou yet?”
“Eh?!”
“Listen to what people are saying, dammit—!”
Already on a short string, Kojou snapped and launched a mighty right hook straight at his father’s face. It was an attack largely bereft of restraint. With a solid hit, Gajou’s skull would shatter.
However, Gajou evaded his son’s attack, launched with the raw strength of a vampire, with room to spare.
“Whoa now… Scary, scary. That was a close one.”
“You middle-aged perv—!”
Even with his body heavily off-balance, Kojou launched a string of left jabs. Gajou’s movements made the powerful string of attacks flail fruitlessly in the air.
In spite of that, Gajou’s lips curled up in a minor show of admiration.
“Huh… I leave for a little while and your attacks get a lot sharper, don’t they? That’s my son for ya. Well, still got a long way to go, though.”
“Wha—?!”
Yukina had a delayed reaction, utterly shocked by Gajou’s unexpected dodges. At some point during the scuffle, Gajou had gotten ahold of the bottle of tabasco sauce, supposedly at the far corner of the table. Then, Gajou blindsided Kojou, giving his son a hearty face full of the bottle’s contents. The timing was so calculated that even his vampiric reaction speed could not fully evade the flying liquid.
Kojou, taking tabasco straight to the eyes, could only writhe helplessly.
“Guooooh… My eyes, my eyes…!”
“S-senpai…?!”
Yukina swiftly rose to her feet and rushed to Kojou, towel in hand. Taking deep interest, Gajou silently watched Yukina valiantly beginning to tend to Kojou.
“Wait a—?! Kojou, Gajou, what do you think you’re doing?!”
Nagisa, rushing over from the kitchen, gawked as she looked at the pathetic state of the room, with tabasco sauce scattered all over it.
Kojou rubbed his inflamed eyes as he unsteadily sat up and yelled, “Shiiit… What the hell did you come over here for anyway?! Normally, you won’t come back even if we ask!!”
“I said, I’m here to pick up Nagisa.”
After stating that, Gajou plopped his hand onto his daughter’s head. It remained there as Nagisa looked up at her father, cheeks puffing up in an obvious sulk.
“Sheesh, if you’re going to come, say so sooner. I have all kinds of plans, after all. Now I have to buy food to cover you, too.”
“…Where do you plan on taking Nagisa?”
Kojou, having somehow regained his vision, glared up at Gajou as he asked the question in a low voice.
To date, Gajou had used Nagisa in his own work a number of times. Previously, Nagisa had been wrapped up in an incident for which Gajou was the underlying cause.
Naturally, Nagisa’s hospitalization had diminished his high-handedness, but that didn’t mean Kojou could be careless. He had reasons to be wary of his father.
However, Gajou gazed with exasperation at the naked antagonism on his own son’s face and said, “Hey, think of the season for a minute. It’s for homecoming.”
“…Homecoming?”
Kojou fell silent, feeling like Gajou’s unexpected words were somehow dodging the question.
Certainly, the end of the old year and the start of the new was cause for celebration all over the world. On Itogami Island, far removed from the mainland, the homecoming rush had to have already begun in earnest.
“It’ll be New Year’s soon. Your granny back in Tanzawa’s vocal about us going back once in a while. We couldn’t do it last year with Nagisa still in the hospital and all. The flight’s first thing tomorrow morning.”
“What the hell…? That’s out of the blue. I’m not ready at all,” Kojou complained with a sour look on his face.
Gajou’s mother—in other words, Kojou and Nagisa’s grandmother—was a resident of Kansai. She worked as a priestess in a little shrine deep in the Tanzawa Mountains. He wasn’t unhappy at the prospect of going to see her, but he couldn’t shake the impression that the visit was abrupt. However—
“Huh? Who said you’re coming?” Gajou replied, casually brushing off his own son’s objections. “It’s just me and Nagisa going back. Mimori doesn’t exactly get along with Granny, you know.”
“Just Nagisa?!”
“Of course. What do you think a plane ticket to the mainland costs at this time of year? It’s not cheap to get a permit to leave Itogami Island, either.”
“G-gnnn…”
Gajou’s pragmatic explanation left Kojou at a loss of words to refute him.
Flights in and out of the airport were restricted, and transit costs were high for flights from Itogami Island to the mainland—made all the worse by the busy season. On top of that, since it was a Demon Sanctuary, annoying paper
work was required to leave or enter Itogami Island, and the commission fees required served as an additional expense. Gajou’s point was entirely valid.
“Besides, there’s a reason for bringing Nagisa back with me. I figured I’d have Granny give her a purification rite. It’s best to have her carefully look over Nagisa to see why she lost her spiritual powers, right?”
“Y-yeah… Yeah, I suppose.”
Kojou grudgingly accepted his father’s words. Though virtually unknown beyond Kojou, Gajou, and other family, Nagisa was once a powerful spiritualist—in the top five nationally.
Nagisa lost her spiritual powers in a demon-instigated incident some four years earlier. Somehow, they’d managed to heal her wounds from the incident, and Nagisa had come out of the hospital safe and sound, but her powers had remained lost for reasons that were still unclear. Nagisa herself paid no attention to the fact she’d lost that ability, but on the other hand, she was afflicted by poor health from time to time for reasons unknown. Kojou, too, supported having a trustworthy spiritualist give Nagisa a look.
In a tiny voice, Yukina whispered into Kojou’s ear, “Senpai, please wait. If you seriously want Nagisa checked, the Lion King Agency would be a better—”
Her expression was unusually serious. Yukina, an exceedingly gifted spiritualist herself, knew the dangers of exorcism well. She was concerned that an amateur trying her hand might have negative effects on Nagisa.
“Ahh, nah, I think it’s probably fine. I’m glad you’re concerned, but I told you before, right? Our granny’s an unregistered Attack Mage. She’s used to this kind of work.”
“…Then that might mean all the more danger. I have an ill premonition. If I am not mistaken, what is possessing Nagisa might be senpai’s—”
“Mm? Something with Kojou’s what?” Gajou butted into the conversation, forcing himself between Yukina’s words.
“Um,” Yukina said, surprised into silence.
Even so, Gajou insistently peered into Yukina’s face. “What, what? Won’t you let me in on it, too?”
“E-er… No, I am sorry. It is nothing.”
Kojou grabbed the back of Gajou’s neck to stop him from backing Yukina further into a corner. “Quit it already,” he snapped, to which Gajou clicked his tongue, his shoulders sinking in visible disappointment.
“Well, no need to worry. Setting aside the strength of Grandma’s own Spirit Sight, it’s New Year’s. The apprentices will probably come to play, too. Maybe that baldy Tokimikado, maybe Pops Shidosawa…”
“I-Instructor Tokimikado…?! And Chairman Shidosawa?” Yukina’s expression stiffened the moment she heard both names.
“You know them?” Kojou asked in a dubious tone.
Yukina hurriedly shook her head and said, “The former chief instructor of the Lion King Agency and the chairman of the Attack Mage Association. They are men far beyond my station for me to have met them, but—”
“Huh… So those old guys are big shots, then?” Kojou murmured in admiration.
Yukina could only nod in amazement. However, her unease over Nagisa’s exorcism had apparently been assuaged. With people of such competence close at hand, even Yukina could not summon any reason to object to the rite.
Gajou gazed at the exchange between Kojou and Yukina, looking like something didn’t quite sit right with him. Then, with some object in mind, he suddenly leaned forward, staring straight into Yukina’s face.
“Incidentally, Himeragi. I have something serious to discuss with you—”
“Y-yes?” Overwhelmed by the serious look coming from Gajou, Yukina subconsciously straightened her posture.
That instant, Gajou broke into a leering gaze and said, “I want to see the faces of my grandchildren sooner rather than later. Maybe a girl, if you can swing it—”
“Pardon?”
With Yukina frozen in place, unable to comprehend the meaning of the words, something came rushing over from right beside her with the force of a cannonball. Kojou had hurled a cushion at his father’s face full-on. Thud, went the cushion, connecting squarely, sending the wide-open Gajou reeling back.
“…That’s dangerous, brat. Don’t raise a hand against your own father,” Gajou casually objected as he rubbed his reddened forehead.
Kojou followed up with a leaping kick at his complacent father.
“Shut up, you middle-aged lecher! I’ll kill you!” Kojou yelled.
“It’s ten years too soon for you to pull that off.”
Gajou calmly sidestepped his own son’s kick and proceeded to give Kojou’s ankle a very hard twist. Overcome with terrible pain, Kojou fell helplessly to the floor.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow!”
“Wait a…?! Kojou, Gajou, what are you doing?!”
Noticing the sudden, violent exchange between the two men, Nagisa hurried to put a stop to it.
“Th…this is senpai’s…father…”
Yukina could only manage a frail murmur to herself, still half-frozen and overwhelmed by the spectacle.
4
The next day—
In the early morning, Kojou Akatsuki, dressed in street clothes, let out a heavy yawn at Itogami Island’s central airport.
The time was just before seven AM, the harshest time of day for a nocturnal vampire.
Naturally, he’d gone all the way to the airport in that state to see Nagisa off, as she was heading for the mainland on an early morning flight, and to keep an eye on his untrustworthy father.
The sun was peeking over the water’s horizon, shining dazzlingly upon the glass-covered airport lobby. Even at that hour, Itogami Island was hot.
“Well, we’re headin’ off for a little while. Get along nice with Himeragi, ’kay?”
“Oh, shut up and get going already.”
Gajou, wearing a vibrant trench coat, spoke to his son in a half-frigid tone. Kojou glared sullenly back at his father in kind.
The flight was scheduled to depart in less than an hour. Considering the troublesome customs inspections peculiar to Demon Sanctuaries, it was right about time to head over to the baggage inspection gate.
Nagisa exchanged a warm and cordial good-bye with Yukina, who’d gone with Kojou to see them off.
“Do watch out. It seems to be cold on the mainland, after all,” Yukina said, concerned.
In her arms, Nagisa clutched a large number of souvenirs for her grandmother. Yukina owed the exhausted expression on her face to joining Nagisa from one airport shop to the next as she picked out those souvenirs.
“Thanks,” said Nagisa with a cheery smile. “I’m more worried about you, Yukina. I hope Kojou doesn’t cause you too much trouble.”
“Mm, I’ll be all right. Don’t worry, I’ll keep a close watch on senpai and make sure he doesn’t bother Aiba and Yume,” Yukina answered in a strong, determined tone.
Kojou Akatsuki, the Fourth Primogenitor, was a vampire who became acquainted with unfamiliar girls, drinking their blood and risking his life for them the moment Yukina let him out of her sight. She had made a heartfelt pledge to redouble her observation efforts.
However, seeing Yukina’s zeal only made Nagisa’s concern deepen.
“…You know, Yukina. Have you heard the phrase Those who hunt for mummies become mummies themselves?”
“Um, er, yes…?”
Why is she saying that to me? thought Yukina, somewhat perplexed. Nagisa, watching Yukina’s oblivious reaction, sighed in apparent resignation.
An announcement came over the airport lobby for passengers to proceed to baggage inspection.
“Well, we’re off. See you soon! Don’t spoil Kojou too much, Yukina. And don’t either of you try to force any funny business!”
“I—I will not spoil him!”
“Like hell she will!”
With flustered, spontaneous retorts, Kojou and Yukina saw Nagisa and Gajou off to the security gate.
When the boisterous father and daughter were out of sight, the airport’s atmosphere suddenly seemed far quiet
er around them.
“Sheesh. Sorry to drag you out for this so early in the morning, Himeragi,” Kojou said, listlessly stretching his back.
Yukina shook her head with her usual overly serious look and replied, “Not at all, senpai. It is my duty to watch over you.”
“Well, that might be the case, but it seems like my dad teased you pretty hard about stuff.”
“I suppose so… No matter how you look at it, him making it seem like I am your girlfriend is a little, ah…”
Yukina looked down a bit with a light flush to her cheeks, almost like she was blushing. But Kojou, for his part, clicked his tongue a little, deeply annoyed.
“His jokes haven’t been funny since way back. This one’s way too stupid.”
“A joke? …I see… Stupid, you say…”
Light vanished from Yukina’s eyes as her expression became dark and cold. Kojou, not noticing the change in Yukina, smiled brightly.
“Sorry that he put you through all that. When he gets back, I’ll drill into his thick skull that you’re not my girlfriend, so forgive him for this time, ’kay?”
“Is that so? I understand very well now.”
“Ah, what?”
“I am sorry that my being only your junior rather than your girlfriend has caused you such annoyance.”
“Ah, er. Himeragi…?”
Yukina suddenly hastened her pace, leaving Kojou in her dust and making him catch up in a hurry.
“By any chance, are you…angry?”
“No, not at all.”
Yukina stopped in place and shot Kojou a look that somehow seemed resentful. Of course, Kojou had no clue what had brought it on. Maybe she really hated how Gajou poured cold water on everything, he thought, almost like it was someone else’s problem.
“Anyway, maybe I’m just imagining this, but it seems like everyone’s on edge today.”
“I said I am not angry.”
“No, not you, Himeragi. Look at those airport security guys.”
“Eh…?”
Hearing Kojou’s murmur, Yukina finally stopped walking altogether.
Kojou had actually noticed a difference in the security right after arriving at the airport. Yukina had probably taken note of it, too.
The number of airport staff watching the departure gate and the airport entrance was well above the norm. Their expressions and actions gave off an air of strict vigilance.
Bride of the Dark God Page 3
