by Nisioisin
“Ka…kak.”
And yet she laughed. What backbone. Or she’d missed her chance to back down, more like.
“W-Watch thy tongue, human─an expert ye may be, and an expert in immortal aberrations at that, but do not for a moment think that means thou knowest aught of me. Forget not, the only reason I have not slain thee on the spot is so that thou might help resolve this physical malady that besets my lord and master. Kakak.”
“Which is exactly why I’m apologizing to you, for stepping on your head and all. For someone so short, you sure are long on pride. Come on, now, let’s bury the hatchet. You nightwalkers are such gloomy folk. I’m real sorry, I’ll be sure never to step on your head again.”
“…”
Gritting her teeth, Shinobu finally fell silent.
This was where I put on the brakes, worried that she might stay silent for months like she did last time. “Stop it, Ms. Kagenui, please.”
At this, Ms. Kagenui looked stunned─apparently, she hadn’t been trying to be mean and just didn’t have a clue. What an unpleasant person.
Everyone─and I mean everyone, even Kaiki─disliked her.
“You too, Shinobu, let it drop. No sense in opening up old wounds.”
“Y-Yet…”
Don’t clutch my sleeve with those tear-filled eyes.
It’s simply too pathetic. And adorably sympathetic.
“You bravely volunteered your own head,” I told her, “to protect mine from the tread of Ms. Kagenui’s feet. That was a selfless act of devotion and personal sacrifice. You can rest easy, your pride is intact, okay?”
“Huh? Oh, aye! ’Twas just as thou sayest, I protected thee, my lord. I am badass indeed!”
Her mood improved in an instant─pathetic, adorable, but also a pain in the ass and kind of a dodo.
“I can’t believe I lost to her…” muttered Ononoki, but Shinobu seemed to be on cloud nine and didn’t hear her. Thank God for small favors. Favors both large and small aside, everyone besides Ms. Kagenui was having a shitty time.
“Well now,” she said, “we have all the players, we have all the information─time for all the answers, I reckon. It won’t do to leave the readers with a mystery, so let’s get to the solution, shall we? Time to solve the riddle.”
“Solve the riddle…”
Something about her words bothered me.
My lack of a reflection wasn’t a riddle, it was just something that was happening…
“Excellent. Proceed,” urged Shinobu.
Her mood improved, she seemed to be feeling generous─well, she’d tasted the humiliation of being stepped on, but I imagine that the erstwhile king of aberrations still had so much self-confidence, not to say self-conceit, that Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki had nothing on her. Whether or not her self-image held water was a different question.
“Koyomi Araragi─kind monster sir,” Ononoki began. “You are, at present─or in the present progressive, turning into a vampire little by little by little. That’s, well, the situation.”
“Turning into a vampire…”
“From human to vampire, little by little. I believe it’s what biologists call metamorphosis, Latin mutatis, Japanese hentai. Hmm, only too appropriate for you, monstieur.”
“…”
Was I supposed to laugh?
Not on your life.
My turn to be expressionless.
But it didn’t come as a surprise, Shinobu’s inspection that morning having already told me as much, and Ms. Kagenui’s inspection (if that’s what you want to call that outburst of violence) having just confirmed it.
“Turning into a vampire… Mm-hmm.”
“How now, young man. You don’t seem particularly put out.”
“Well, I’ve become a vampire so many times at this point… I’m obviously not going to be as freaked out as I was the first time, over spring break. I don’t want to brag in front of experts like yourselves, but I’ve had more on my plate over the past year than you might think…”
The past few months in particular had been pretty extreme.
The stuff with Hachikuji, the stuff with Sengoku─
And.
That transfer student.
“I’m sure you have,” Ononoki agreed.
In an insinuating tone.
“You held that plate out like a moron.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” the familiar shook her head.
Her barb, loaded with a scathing sarcasm that could only have come from Kaiki, was too indirect, too roundabout, for me to understand what she was getting at.
When I said I didn’t want to brag, was I actually bragging? Had an expert been offended by the remarks of a noob who was still in high school? No, Ononoki wasn’t the type.
Whatever the case, the fact that her personality was different every time we met made her tricky to deal with. It’s hard to get accustomed to such a mercurial character.
“Don’t be so harsh on the boy, Yotsugi. I’ll not deny the young man here may have behaved moronically, but I reckon some part of that responsibility lies with us,” Ms. Kagenui covered for me, if that’s what she was doing, for whatever reason─okay, fine, I have no clue what she was pulling there.
Suddenly I realized it was past nine o’clock.
Sure, everything had taken a while, but our meeting had been set for seven.
Could we get to it already?
“As for why you’re metamorphosing, monstieur. As for why the hentai is being perverted into a vampire…”
Not gonna let that one drop, huh?
What’s the deal, got a bone to pick with me?
“It has nothing to do with your interrelationship with the former Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade─I think you probably already knew that, but it’s important enough that it bears repeating.”
“Nothing to do with Shinobu…but can I really be turning into a vampire independent of the fact that she used to be one?”
“You can. There’s one last thing I want to clarify. Sis,” Ononoki turned to Shinobu, “do you really not have some inkling? Of why─this is happening to kind monster sir, your lord, your master?”
Shinobu seemed displeased. “Had I, I would not stoop to asking the likes of thee for aid.”
“And Oshino never said a word about it?” asked Ms. Kagenui.
“Nay. ’Tis true that I cannot recall everything he spoke of─most of it washed over me like a cool breeze, but had he touched on something of such dire import, I would remember.”
“I reckon you would,” Ms. Kagenui took Shinobu’s somewhat cocky remark in stride. “Yes indeedy, I reckon even Oshino missed this one. It was irregular, or, an oversight. If he’d known things were going to go this way, he’d never have let such misgivings go unheeded.”
“An oversight? Oshino? Is that even possible? How can that be, how can a guy who acted like he saw through everything─”
An oversight.
Just thinking about it freaked me out.
“He didn’t really,” Ms. Kagenui corrected me. “And for what it’s worth, he might see through to the truth of the matter but not take care of it for you. He’s like Gaen-senpai in that way. Strict, or businesslike when it comes to that sort of thing, wont to operate solely on the basis of profit and loss. If’n you ask me, even a capricious contrarian like Kaiki at least has a little more warmth to him.”
“…”
I had some reservations about calling it “warmth,” but true, while a pain in the ass about money, Kaiki’s petty accounting was also very human.
“Still and all, I reckon this time around it was nothing but a plain old oversight─in other words, it was opaque to Mister All-Seeing, to Mèmè Oshino.”
“Opaque─to Oshino.”
Saying those words out loud made me realize just how anomalous they felt. Maybe it was plausible to Ms. Kagenui, who’d known Oshino since college and seen her share of his failures, but to me, after everything he’d done for me this year─aft
er watching him “see through” everything time and time again, it sounded like a bad joke.
A bad joke. A bad reality.
A bad─paranormal phenomenon.
“Isn’t that a big deal? Something that’s never happened before is happening in my body─something unprecedented, something that my accumulated experience is useless in dealing with─”
“Keep your shirt on. It’s certainly unusual, that much is true. For Oshino’s predictions and judgments to be wrong, I mean─but still, young man, it’s a hoot to see you so shocked by it.”
“A h-hoot?”
I guess from Ms. Kagenui’s perspective as a fellow specialist and old friend of Oshino’s, my level of shock seemed pretty ridiculous─no need to come right out and say it, though.
It hurt my feelings.
Man is she oblivious, I started to think, but apparently that wasn’t what was going on since Ms. Kagenui went on to say:
“But the fact that this particular matter was opaque to Oshino was entirely your fault.”
“…? Huh?”
I was shocked again, if you want to talk about shocked, but more than that, I was bewildered.
I simply didn’t understand what she meant, but if she was saying that Koyomi Araragi was opaque to Mèmè Oshino, that was impossible.
I was like a flimsy piece of tracing paper to him─so transparent you could see right through to the other side.
I had always been the insubstantial, weak Koyomi Araragi to him.
Always and forever, consistently─I had never once stymied his predictions. I’m not like Hanekawa. And not even she threw him off all the time─
“Please tell me what you mean, Ms. Kagenui. How did I throw Oshino off his game? I think you must be wrong about that… But if something of the sort happened─I need to know.”
“I’ll let you know the moment I do. That’s what I’ve come here to find out─but one thing’s certain, there’s trouble brewing. We could very well─that is, if things keep on this way…”
Me and Yotsugi here. We might have no choice but to kill you, she stated.
She did so without lowering her voice or changing her tone perceptibly, as though it was just part of the natural flow of the conversation.
“…”
“No choice but to kill you─if things go south, that is. Now then, young man. It’s easy as pie to see why your body’s metamorphosing into a vampire’s─why you’re clearly headed in that direction. Honestly, it doesn’t take an expert, it’s so simple you should’ve figured it out all by your lonesome.”
You could’ve been self-aware enough to awake to the reality, she chided.
“What, do you mean?”
“You turned into a vampire too much.”
Ms. Kagenui said this in, you guessed it, the exact same tone─and from there, Ononoki took over, you guessed it, expressionlessly, speaking in her overwhelmingly placid voice.
“You just kept piling more on your plate─you moron. In the course of solving all those problems, you relied too much on your power as a vampire, and so, irrespective of the former Heartunderblade, your immortal soul inexorably ended up approaching vampiredom.”
“Approaching─”
“You’ve been literally transforming yourself into a vampire.”
010
It may be a little late at this point to insert “the story so far.” It feels like I missed the window, and frankly it’s a total embarrassment as a narrator─but if I’m going to explain everything in proper sequence, it’s got to be now or never.
Where to begin? I guess it’s got to be spring break─that hellish spring break.
Or no, strictly speaking, just before it started?
That bloodsucking spring when I was attacked by a vampire, when I became a vampire─up until then I had somehow managed to make my way down the road of humanity, sometimes unsteady on my feet, sometimes going off course of course, but that spring I strayed entirely.
That was about a year ago.
Once I became a vampire, it was neither a kinslaying vampire nor a half-vampire nor a vampire-hunting spec ops team who saved me─but a heaven-sent class president with braids and glasses, and an older guy in a Hawaiian shirt.
And I became human once more, a demon no longer.
Give or take a few lingering after-effects.
And they all lived happily ever after.
Except when they didn’t.
I’ve already told you all of this, so let’s skip ahead a month─to Golden Week. The end of April and into the beginning of May─a nightmare. Tsubasa Hanekawa, who’d played a central role in restoring my humanity, was bewitched by a cat.
It took more than a spritz of water in the face to repel that malicious, murderous feline assault on Hanekawa─on the world itself. I did it by exploiting my vampiric power.
The might of a vampire.
I employed the vampiric strength that I lost over spring break, which you’d think I would’ve abhorred, that power I risked my life to escape, and defeated the cat─well, temporarily sealed it away, anyway.
Incidentally, I regained my vampiric power by giving my blood to Shinobu. By letting the little girl bite me in the neck. It all comes down to this. At the time, Shinobu was not yet bound in my shadow, so I had to give her blood at regular intervals, but on that occasion I let her exceed her usual dosage─and so was able to turn into a vampire, or more precisely, a thrall of the Aberration Slayer.
I was able to─for better or for worse.
But then, during the subsequent school term─when Oshino was still around, in other words─the only time I really used my vampiric power was that time with Kanbaru, the thing with her and the monkey.
With Senjogahara, who met a crab.
With Hachikuji, waylaid by a snail.
With Sengoku, entangled by a snake.
Not to mention the second time Hanekawa was bewitched by the cat─on each occasion I dealt with the aberration-related phenomenon in question solely as a human being.
If Ononoki was right and I in fact leaned too hard on my power as a vampire, it had to be later on─like when Karen Araragi was stung by a bee.
When she was stung by a bee thanks to Kaiki’s scheming─I used my vampiric healing factor to absorb some of the blistering fever that wracked her body.
And then it was Tsukihi’s turn.
The matter both concerning and involving Tsukihi─it was Obon, and that was when it came to blows with Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki. In order to battle the Aberration Roller, slayer of immortal aberrations, I transformed myself into an immortal aberration. A vampire.
To tell the truth, even having commandeered the strength of a vampire, I was no match for Ms. Kagenui─but regardless, that must’ve been the inflection point.
When I stopped being human.
And began metamorphosing into a vampire.
A rapid-fire series of aberration-related phenomena cropped up since the last day of summer break and throughout second term─and each time, to deal with them, I turned into an immortal vampire.
I got used to using my vampiric power, relying on my vampiric power, wielding my vampiric power to deal with these unreliable and unwieldy aberration-related phenomena─sometimes I even used it to deal with other things.
I leaned on it most heavily when Sengoku was entangled by a snake for the second time─no, when she was the one who entangled the snake.
That was when it really started.
I wanted to save Sengoku.
So I turned into a vampire almost every day hoping to resolve the situation─which wasn’t very effective as it turned out, and in fact effectively one hundred percent counter-productive, but anyway, that went on for a month, two months.
And that brings us to the present moment.
The present situation.
The present phenomenon.
“Basically, monstieur, you spent too much time as an immortal aberration. You overdid it, blithely bouncing back and forth like that. I imagi
ne that as far as you were aware, you weren’t ‘overdoing’ anything, let alone ‘blithely,’ but still…” said Ononoki.
I sensed something like sympathy in her tone, but that had to be my own self-serving imagination─she was speaking in her quiet, placid voice like always.