by Nisioisin
For those possessed of an absolute confidence in themselves, maybe the amount of property they own isn’t actually much of a problem─well, it might be a problem, but whatever problems might arise, whatever they might lack, as long as they have themselves they’re able to deal with it.
Even if they should lose their power.
Even if they should lose that which defines them.
Even then─as long as they have themselves.
“Verily, the road at night be no cause for alarm to one such as I─’tis rather the noonday road with its blazing orb hanging overhead that presents a danger.”
She said this to me on the roof of that abandoned building─back when she was not a pseudo-vampire, not the dregs of a vampire nor the shadow of her former self, but a full-fledged vampire.
In other words, back when she was still the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire known as Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.
A vampire speaking of the risks of the noonday sun─well, yeah, almost too typical. While people like Mèmè Oshino and that triumvirate of vampire experts were certainly her enemies, never has she had a greater natural enemy than the sun.
So the fact that losing her power paradoxically meant she could now walk around in broad daylight must’ve been something of an unexpected windfall.
No.
To collect that windfall she’d had to give up something much greater, so it’s probably a little weird to talk about it in such positive terms.
“And yet, on the night road, the next step is ever shrouded in darkness─an unseen path. Canst truly call a path unseen a path at all?”
She’s said some such thing.
True, for a road to function as a road, it has to be clearly delineated─simply defining it isn’t enough.
You know one when you see one seems like an appropriate requirement for a path─if someone told you afterwards that the ground you’d been traversing was in fact this or that road, it’d leave you cold, right?
To put it another way.
So long as you walk with your eyes closed, whatever path you may be on isn’t functioning as one─it’s just the ground.
It’s not a road, no matter how unwavering it might be.
That’s precisely why.
The streetlights come on at night.
So you don’t lose sight of the road─
Or so you don’t encounter aberrations.
“Hmph. Streetlights, thou sayest.”
The night hath long since lost its darkness─came the vampire’s irritated reply. Well, it’s understandable that she’d be irritated, given that a reduction in darkness diminished her territory─it might not be a problem, but her domain was still being invaded.
The dark.
Darkness.
These things are never extinguished. In fact, extinguishment creates the dark and darkness. And yet.
“Of old, ’twas naught but the moon─that illumined the roads at night.”
The perfect disc of the moon.
Unfortunately the moon wasn’t full that night─nevertheless, she gazed with longing at the sky.
At the night sky, illuminating the night road.
002
“For reals?!” exclaimed Shinobu, all of a sudden─while I’d had months to get used to her constant use of the phrase, hearing it out of the blue like that still startled me.
It made me cower in confused terror.
The strength of the exclamation made me feel like I was being yelled at. It was clearly a contraction denoting “Is what you’re saying really true?” but at this point, it had lost its original meaning, she’d lost sight of it, and she used it as if it meant hello.
Which made me want to ask her if she was for reals, or just prone to exaggeration.
It was December.
The end of the year─the month that my ancestors called “Tutor-Run.”
I’ve heard it was because even sensei got so busy that they ran everywhere, but apparently that’s just a folk etymology. I mean, it always made me think, They run even when it’s not the end of the year, so when Hanekawa told me it was nothing more than folklore, I was plenty satisfied. But that being the case, I still have no idea as to its origins.
And I’ve never asked.
Maybe that lack of intellectual curiosity is just one of my many faults─but given that we say January jets, February flees, and March makes its getaway, the idea of December running doesn’t seem far-fetched enough to warrant comment or question.
Well, regardless of whether or not teachers are busy in December, those of us preparing for our college entrance exams sure as hell are─the national was coming up next month already.
I had very little in the way of free time.
Though if we’re being honest, I wasn’t swamped solely because of my exam prep. In fact, I had so much to deal with that I would’ve loved to say forget it, I don’t have time for exams, and ditch out on my studies altogether.
But that’s easier said than done.
Because even when they know their death is at hand─even when the day of execution has been announced, the sentence handed down, human beings still have to keep on living right up to the bitter end.
To keep on going about their business.
Which is why I was, in fact, spending the day speeding down the home stretch towards my exams─but just as I decided to take a quick break to intake some sugar in between math and Japanese, Shinobu appeared.
With a For reals?!
“…Shinobu, ’sup.”
That was all the greeting I could muster for the little blond girl who’d come flying out of my shadow to peer intently around the room like a hawk, or a demon.
Shinobu Oshino.
Vampire─ex-vampire.
The king of aberrations─who spends most of her time lurking in my shadow. She was at present a fallen queen, but her brazen attitude was still every inch that of a monarch.
And, since she was by nature a vampire, which is to say nocturnal, even though she’d lost her power, lost sight of her true essence, she basically spent the daylight hours snoozing in my shadow. Yet here she was, awake despite the fact that it was only three in the afternoon.
At this point she seemed less nocturnal or vampire than someone with an unstable lifestyle─what’s next, is she gonna tell me mornings still count as nighttime?
Seriously, though, what the hell?
It wasn’t the witching hour, it wasn’t the dead of night, it was just snack time. She’d show up now?
“Morning.”
“Morealsning?!” Shinobu returned my greeting, half-heartedly.
A mash-up of “morning” and “for reals,” neologism in action… Things were going to get really out of hand with this verbal tic of hers if the variations started proliferating. And, after peering intently around the room, she finally looked in my direction─
“Mm,” she noticed me. “So there thou art. Hmph, as they say, ’tis truly darkest beneath the lighthouse.”
“Isn’t that a good thing for you?” Pleased at having been inadvertently likened to a lighthouse, a symbol of height, I returned her stare. “Come on. You had trouble finding me?”
“Nay,” Shinobu pointed at me.
No, not at me─at the tray in my hands.
“Be that the source of the odor?”
“Uh, yeah… I figured I should replenish my blood sugar while I was taking a break…”
Resting on the tray I brought up from the kitchen were a plate piled with snacks and a mug filled with black coffee… Did this girl really make the trip out of my shadow just for snack time?
Some vampire.
The behavior of the royal family is sullying the good name of aberrations everywhere.
“If there be no cake, I shall resign myself to eating bread. I have spoken.”
“You’ll ruin your body that way, you know.”
“And yet, I am troubled by how best to treat sweet buns. Be they sweets or be they bread, I cann
ot say! Tell me, be they staple foods or snacks?”
“Sweet buns are snacks. You can rest easy.”
“And yet sweetbreads are a fitting meal for a vampire indeed─kakak,” Shinobu laughed gruesomely.
Well, the laugh itself was all very picturesque, but it seemed wildly out of place when we were discussing the ontology of dessert with a tray of sweets between us…
“Now, tell me of these snacks. Be they donuts? They must surely be donuts. There can be no doubt of it.”
“Yeah… They’re donuts all right.”
I wasn’t actually as tall as a lighthouse (obviously), but given that Shinobu was currently the height of a little girl, she couldn’t see what was on the tray I was holding.
With those eyes full of delighted anticipation fixed on me, I was frankly at a loss for words. It’s just, if I didn’t properly explain what was going on, it could come back and bite me in the…
“Here’s the thing, Shinobu. They’re donuts, but─”
“Donuts, ye say! Superb!”
Shinobu reached up with both hands.
Just like a child.
It was impossible to detect in that action even a hint of the majesty she once possessed, when she seemed almost twice my height─even with both her hands stuck straight up in the air, she can hardly reach my chin these days.
“I had a premonition that today’s sweets would be donuts! Such unerring intuition! Now then, my master, render those donuts unto me, and not a moment too soon!”
“If it were a moment too soon, it wouldn’t be snack time yet…Anyway, listen for a second, Shinobu.”
Stumped as to how to explain things to an enigmatic little girl who ordered her master to render something unto her, I decided that in this case a picture was indeed worth a thousand words. I squatted down to her eye-level and placed the tray in question on the floor.
“Wahoo! …Hn?”
For an instant Shinobu’s excitement reached fever pitch, but her expression quickly turned dubious. Her gaze was fixed on the five donuts arranged on the plate atop the tray.
“My lord.”
“What?”
“What are these? Be they the new line from Mister Donut?”
“No, Shinobu. These are called handmade donuts.”
“The new line from Mister Donut which they hath dubbed ‘handmade donuts’?”
“Calling their new product ‘handmade’ would cast undue suspicion on all their other donuts. No, no. You must’ve still been asleep inside my shadow, but Senjogahara just dropped by with these donuts to support the troops.”
“…?”
Shinobu looked completely uncomprehending. If this couldn’t get across to her, what the hell good was our pairing?
“Look, I’m saying that she made these donuts in the kitchen at her house, then brought them over to keep me going while I study,” I tried slightly altering the wording and explaining again─apparently it was going to require a great deal of patience and perseverance to make this clear to her.
That is, I’d known it was going to be like this, which was the whole reason I’d planned to eat them all while Shinobu was still asleep instead of saving them for later…
“Huh? Um, hang on a sec. I’m thinking.”
“You’re talking totally normally. What happened to your old-timey speech?”
Hang on a sec, she says.
Dress it up a little.
“Then, the tsundere maiden (18) who counteth herself thy lady love hath─”
“You can leave out the (18) part, (600).”
“I am but (598). I’ll thank thee not to round up.”
“Says someone who was rounding down for, how long?”
“The tsundere maiden (even the most horrible demons were once eighteen)─”
“She’s not horrible, you can’t say that about a person’s girlfriend. Plus you’re the only demon around here.”
We weren’t getting anywhere.
Maybe that was a sign of just how discombobulated Shinobu was─she wasn’t being violent, but that might just be because she was still in shock. If so, I was scared of what lay in store for me. Beyond scared.
“The tsundere maiden hath wrought a counterfeit of Mister Donut? That will not stand, ’tis a crime.”
“They’re not counterfeit. They’re normal, regular donuts. Homemade donuts, the kind which, let’s get real, don’t require all that much expertise.”
If we were going to get even realer, these were donuts that even Senjogahara could make, but I preferred to avoid being so deprecating toward my own girlfriend if I could help it.
“I am yet mystified…”
Shinobu crossed her arms and stared down at the donuts on the plate like an inspector of some sort. Or maybe more like an executioner, her gaze was so intense.
She could bore a hole through you with that look─though, being donuts, they already had them.
“I understand this incident which hath transpired, and yet.”
“Incident? It’s not a crime, okay? My girlfriend just brought me some refreshments, don’t talk about it like it’s some historical affair. It’s literally as banal as could be.”
“Then, in order to bring donuts to bolster my lord’s efforts, the tsundere counterfeiter independently developed donuts in her own domicile, rather than hieing herself to the Mister Donut Shinobu Branch?”
“Developed… Whatever, sure. I mean, your word choice is kind of off, but you’ve got the basic gist.”
I’m not aware of a store called the Mister Donut Shinobu Branch, but since there’s only one Mister Donut in our town, she must be referring to that favorite haunt of hers.
Though as far as she was concerned, it might be more accurate to call it her personal outlet than her favorite haunt…
“Wherefore?” asked Shinobu with a serious expression.
She looked at me with round eyes full of earnest wonder, as if she were asking me why babies were born or why people die, but she was just asking: Why did Senjogahara make donuts at her own house instead of buying them at the store?
“Um, I don’t know how to answer that question… To encourage me while I’m studying for exams?”
And also probably to check on me, to make sure I was studying, to make sure I haven’t harmed myself out of despair─though I was pretty sure the overriding goal was encouragement. But that wasn’t what Shinobu was asking.
“I am telling thee ’tis the meaning I do not understand. What is the intention behind troubling thyself to produce that which can be bought?”
“‘Intention’ might be too strong a word…”
“Buying them would be cheaper, nay?”
“…”
I was getting lectured by an almost six-hundred-year-old vampire about thrift… From a cost performance standpoint, maybe she’s right? If we’re talking purely about the cost of the ingredients, then maybe homemade would be more economical, but when you factor in the time spent shopping and the hassle of making the donuts─Hitagi Senjogahara’s labor costs, in other words─the view that “buying them would be cheaper” wasn’t totally wrong…
Still, she just sounded like someone who sucked at household tasks…
“When they have a special offer, ’tis but a hundred yen a donut at Mister Donut. These five donuts would be but five hundred yen. Taxed, ’twould amount to naught but five hundred and twenty-five yen. Five hundred and twenty-five yen, well, verily doth it depend upon thy circumstances, but most would see that as a paltry sum, would they not? Miss Tsundere begrudges even such a meager expenditure?”
“She wasn’t begrudging anything… In fact, she took the trouble to make these.”
“And what I am asking thee is wherefore would she take that trouble.”
Man, was she persistent.
No, calling it persistent makes it sound like a legitimate line of questioning─this was just stubbornness.
“Even should the tax increase to eight percent…let me see, five hundred times eight…”
She began calculating on her fingers.
Sure, eight percent isn’t as easy to calculate as five percent, but I don’t think you can do multiplication on your fingers anyway.