by Nisioisin
But it was fine.
If the staple hadn’t punched through, that meant it was not overly deformed…and close to its original shape, a rectangle with a missing side. It wasn’t hooked in, so to speak, which meant I’d be able to rip it out without meeting too much resistance.
I pinched it between my thumb and index finger, and yanked.
The sharp pain was joined by a dull, metallic taste.
I seemed to be spurting blood.
“Kh…ahh…”
I was fine.
This much─I could take fine.
Licking the two puncture wounds that had formed on the inside of my cheek, I bent the staple I’d taken out and placed it in the pocket of my school-issued jacket. I also picked up the staple Senjogahara had dropped and did the same. It’d be dangerous if someone stepped on it with bare feet. Staples looked like magnum ammo to me now.
“Hm? You’re still here, Araragi?”
As I was doing this, Hanekawa emerged from the classroom.
She seemed to be done.
Why couldn’t she have come sooner?
Or maybe her timing was right.
“Don’t you need to hurry to Mister Oshino’s?” Hanekawa asked suspiciously.
She hadn’t noticed a thing, it seemed.
Just a wall in between─right, she’d been beyond a mere, thin wall. Hitagi Senjogahara, who nevertheless pulled off an act of derring-do without Hanekawa noticing a thing─was indeed someone to be reckoned with.
“Hey, Hanekawa… Do you like bananas?”
“Hm? Uh, I don’t particularly dislike them. They’re nutritious, too, so if I had to choose between like and dislike, then sure, I like them.”
“Even if you love them, don’t ever have them at school!”
“E-Excuse me?”
“Just eating them wouldn’t be all that terrible, but if I ever catch you tossing a leftover peel on the stairs, I’ll never forgive you!”
“What are you talking about, Araragi?!” Hanekawa said with a puzzled expression and a hand to her mouth.
Of course she did.
“Anyway, Araragi, what about Mister─”
“I’m going to Oshino’s─as we speak.”
With that, I rushed off, blowing past Hanekawa. “Yikes! Hey, Araragi, don’t run in the halls! Don’t make me tell on you!” her voice came from behind, but naturally I ignored it.
I ran.
I just ran.
I turned the corner to reach the stairs.
I was on the fourth floor.
She couldn’t have gone that far yet.
With a hop, step, and a jump, I skipped two, three, then four stairs at a time─and arrived on the landing.
I could feel the impact in my legs.
An impact commensurate to my weight.
Then this impact, too─
Senjogahara had to be lacking.
She weighed nothing.
She had no weight.
Which meant─her footing wasn’t secure.
A crab.
A crab, she’d said.
“Not this way─this way.”
She couldn’t have gone off sideways at that point. Never thinking that I’d come chasing after her, she would have proceeded straight ahead, toward the school gates. She had to be a member of the no-extracurriculars club, but even if she were affiliated with an actual something-or-other, no activity would kick off at such a late hour. With that assumption, I descended the stairs from the third floor to the second, not hesitating for a moment. I leapt down them.
Then from the second floor to the landing of the first.
Senjogahara was there.
I was practically rolling down the stairs in pursuit and creating a ruckus, so she must have caught on, because she still had her back to me but had already turned her head.
With a cold look.
“…I can’t believe you,” she said. “Or rather, I’m honestly surprised. As far as I can remember, being able to feel rebellious so soon after having that much done to you is a first, Araragi.”
“A first…”
She’d done it to others, too?
What was that about “a hundred days of sermons,” then?
Come to think of it, though, it made sense that keeping a secret like “not having any weight,” which the slightest contact could divulge, was impossible realistically speaking…
And she’d said “so far,” hadn’t she?
Maybe she really was some devil.
“Also,” she added, “pain in your oral cavity shouldn’t be so easy to recover from. Normally, you can’t budge from the spot for a good ten minutes.”
She was speaking from experience.
Too scary.
“All right, I get it. I get it, Araragi. Your ‘eye for an eye’ attitude agrees with my own sense of justice. If you’re down for it…”
Senjogahara fanned her arms out to both sides as she spoke.
“Let’s have ourselves a war.”
In her hands were─stationery tools of every kind, the box cutter, the stapler, and more: sharpened HB pencil, compass, tricolor ballpoint pen, mechanical pencil, super glue, rubber band, paper clip, bulldog clip, power clipper, permanent marker, safety pin, fountain pen, correction fluid, scissors, cellophane tape, sewing kit, letter opener, plastic isosceles triangle, thirty-centimeter ruler, protractor, rubber cement, an assortment of chisels, paint, paperweight, ink.
……
I began to feel that some day in the future, I’d be groundlessly persecuted by society for the mere act of having shared a class with her.
I personally saw the super glue as the most dangerous.
“W-Wait, wait, no. We’re not having a war,” I said.
“We’re not? Oh, well.”
She sounded a bit disappointed.
But her arms were still outstretched.
Her deadly weapons, otherwise known as stationery, still gleamed.
“Then what do you want?”
“I was thinking, just maybe,” I replied, “I might be able to help you out.”
“Help me out?”
From the bottom of her heart, it seemed─
She sneered like I was a fool.
No, maybe she was angry.
“Give me a break. Didn’t I tell you I don’t need any cheap sympathy? You can’t do a thing for me. Keep mum and pay no attention to me, that’s all I want.”
“……”
“Generosity, too─I will deem as hostile behavior.”
With those words, she climbed one step.
She had to be serious.
Our earlier interaction had taught me all too well that she wasn’t the hesitant type. Damn well.
And that’s why.
That’s why, without saying a word, I stuck a finger against the edge of my lips and tugged to show her my cheek.
My right cheek, with my right hand.
Naturally, this exposed the inside of my mouth.
“Wha-”
The sight couldn’t but shock even Senjogahara. The deadly weapons otherwise known as stationery spilled and fell from both of her hands.
“You─how did…”
I could tell even before she’d asked.
Yes.
The taste of blood was already gone.
The wound Senjogahara had dealt to my mouth with her stapler had healed without a trace.
004
It happened during spring break.
I was attacked by a vampire.
In this day and age of real, working maglev trains, where overseas school trips are nothing unusual, it’s embarrassing enough to make me want to go into hiding, but regardless, I was attacked by a vampire.
She was blood-chillingly gorgeous.
A beautiful demon.
She was─such a beautiful demon.
Though they’re concealed behind the collar of my uniform’s jacket, the traces of her deep bite still remain on my neck. I’m hoping that my hair will grow out before it gets ho
t out, but putting that aside─usually, when regular people get attacked by a vampire, the story goes that they’re saved by an expert vampire hunter, by Christianity’s special forces, or perhaps even by a vampire-slaying vampire who hunts its own kind, but in my case, I was saved by a shabby old dude who happened to be passing by.
Thanks to him, I was somehow able to turn back into a human─fine again with sunlight, crosses, garlic, and such, but the effect, or rather, the aftereffect the experience had on me was a remarkable improvement in my physical abilities. Not my athletic abilities, mind you, but like my metabolism, in the way of recuperating. While I don’t know how I would’ve ended up if the box cutter had ripped my cheek apart, it takes less than thirty seconds to heal something like a simple staple stabbed through my flesh. At any rate, to begin with, wounds in the oral cavity tend to heal quickly for any organism.
“Oshino─a Mister Oshino?”
“Right. Mèmè Oshino.”
“Mèmè Oshino, huh─quite an adorable-sounding name, I have to say.”
“You shouldn’t get your hopes up on that count. He’s a weathered, middle-aged, thirty-something.”
“I see. But as a kid, he must have been quite a moé character.”
“Don’t look at flesh-and-blood people like that. And wait, do you even know what that word means?”
“It’s a part of common learning these days,” Senjogahara said blithely. “And you call characters like me tsundere, right? Cold and mean at first, but loving once you get to know me?”
“………”
With how cold she was, “tundra” suited her better.
But I digress.
About twenty minutes by bicycle from Naoetsu Private High School, which Hanekawa, Senjogahara, and I attended, stands a cram school slightly separated from any homes.
Stood.
Apparently, a few years ago, it took the full brunt of a big cram school chain setting up shop in front of the station, ran into financial troubles, and went out of business. By the time I learned of the four-story building’s existence, though, it was an abandoned ruin through and through, so all this is second-hand info.
Danger.
Private Property.
No Trespassing.
Despite a plethora of such signs and the Safety First fence surrounding it, access is as good as unrestricted thanks to all the gaps.
In these ruins─lives Oshino.
He’s taken up residence, without permission.
For an entire month now, starting during spring break.
“God, my bottom hurts. It’s numb. And my skirt got wrinkled,” Senjogahara said.
“Not my fault.”
“Stop trying to talk your way out of this, or I’ll lop it off.”
“Which body part?!”
“This is my first time riding on a bicycle with someone else. Can’t you be a little more generous?”
Wasn’t generosity hostile behavior for her?
Everything this girl said and did was beyond the pale.
“So, how exactly might I have tried?” I asked.
“Well, as a small suggestion, couldn’t you have given me your bag to use as a cushion?”
“Do you not give a crap about anyone other than yourself?”
“Please, don’t use such rude language with me. I said it was only a small suggestion.”
How did repeating that make it any better?
It was most questionable.
“You know, I bet even Marie Antoinette was a little more modest and humble than you,” I said.
“She’s something like my disciple,” Senjogahara replied.
“In what timeline?!”
“I wish you’d stop casually riffing off of everything I say. You’re acting like we’re buddies or something. Listening to you, a stranger might even think that we’re classmates.”
“We are classmates!”
How much was she going to disavow me?
That was just too cold.
“Jeez…” I lamented. “I guess dealing with you requires an unbelievable amount of patience.”
“Araragi. The way you put that, it almost sounds like I’m the one who’s hard to get along with, not you.”
That’s exactly what I wanted to say.
“Actually, where’s your own bag?” I asked her. “You’re empty-handed. Do you not carry one?” In fact, I couldn’t remember ever seeing Senjogahara carrying anything with her.
“I have all my textbooks stored inside my head. So I just leave them in my school locker. If I hide all my stationery around my body, there’s no need for a bag. And in my case, gym clothes are out.”
“Ah, I see.”
“If both of my hands aren’t free, it’s harder to fight when the time comes.”
“……”
Her entire body was a weapon.
She was a human weapon.
“The only issue I have is with hygiene products because it bothers me to keep them at school. With no friends, I can’t borrow them from anyone, either.”
“…You’re being awfully open about this, you know.”
“Why not? Menses is Latin for month. It’s a natural phenomenon, nothing to be embarrassed of. I’d say it’s more indecent to be furtive about it.”
I wasn’t so sure about not being at least a little furtive.
No, it was a matter of personal choice.
Not my place to say.
Maybe what I ought to be making a note of instead was her even more open admission─that she didn’t have any friends.
“Oh, that’s right,” I said, turning to face her after reaching an “entrance.”
Though it was all the same to me, I’d searched for a particularly large one because, to judge from her earlier comment about her skirt, Senjogahara, being a girl after all, might not want her uniform to fray.
“Let me hold on to your stationery or whatever.”
“Huh?”
“Take it out. I’ll hold on to it.”
“Huh? Huh?”
From her expression, you might think that I’d made an outrageous demand. It seemed to ask if something was wrong with my head.
“Oshino is, well, he’s a weird dude, but he did technically save my life─”
Not only that.
He’d saved Hanekawa’s, too.
“─and I can’t have the man who did face a dangerous person. So I’ll hold on to your stationery.”
“You only tell me after we’ve come this far?” Senjogahara glared at me. “It seems I’ve stepped into a trap.”
“……”
Nah, that was way overboard.
But Senjogahara struggled silently with the matter for a while. She scowled at me now and then or stared at a point by her feet.
I wondered if she was going to turn around and leave, but at last, like someone prepared for the worst, she said, “Understood. Take them.”
Then, taking out a myriad of stationery from across her body like it was some magic show, she began handing them to me. What I’d seen earlier on the landing was only the tip of her badness and madness. You could’ve told me her pockets stretched into the fourth dimension; it could’ve been twenty-second-century science. I’d told her I’d hold on to it, but she was producing so much materiel I was starting to doubt if my bag was up to it.
…Someone like her strolling around in public unrestricted surely amounted to negligence on the part of the authorities…
“Don’t get me wrong,” Senjogahara warned after she’d finished giving everything to me. “It’s not like I’m letting my guard down around you.”
“You might as well…”
“If you’re trying to get back at me for stabbing you with a staple by tricking me into entering these desolate ruins, you’ll be making the wrong party pay.”