by Nisioisin
“No way, no way, no waaay… I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna diiiee! Help me, help me, help me! Please, pleeease, if you help me, I’ll do anything you say if you help meeee!”
She screamed, painfully, unabashedly, as if I wasn’t there.
Uncontrollably she cried and screamed.
She bawled.
“I can’t die, I can’t die, I don’t wanna disappear, I don’t wanna vanish! Nooo! Somebody, somebody, somebody, someboddyyy─”
Who?
Nobody would ever help a vampire.
No matter how much she cried or screamed, I couldn’t let my-self be moved.
I mean, I’d die.
A body’s worth of blood?
I’d always been too scared even to donate any.
It’s just this kind of thing that I hated, right?
I hate being burdened by other humans, so a monster? The weight was too much for me to even imagine carrying.
Just try having a vampire as your burden. See how much your intensity as a human drops then.
“Waaaaaah!”
Her tears began to turn blood-red.
I couldn’t say.
I couldn’t say, but─it seemed to signal death.
A vampire’s death.
Tears of blood.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Finally, her words had turned from plea to apology.
What was she apologizing for?
Who was she apologizing to?
Whatever the case─I couldn’t bear to watch her apologizing like that, for reasons unknown and to an unknown being.
I had a feeling she probably wasn’t supposed to be doing that.
A being like her wasn’t supposed to die so miserably.
“Unh… Aaahhhhh!!”
At that late stage, I let out a yell and began to run.
I forced my immobile legs into action─turning my back to her with all my heart and all my strength, I took off running.
I could still hear her voice behind me, apologizing.
Was I the only one hearing her voice?
Might someone else not go there summoned by it?
Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.
Wouldn’t someone try to help her?
…Of course not. They would die.
And in any case, she was a monster. A vampire.
No need to help her─right?
“Of course I know that!”
I slammed the paper bag I’d been carrying into the garbage collection area I’d come to.
The paper bag holding the two dirty magazines.
You’re supposed to take your trash out in the morning, but there was no garbage collection on Sundays to begin with. My chucking them there nonetheless was a minimal show of conscience.
Some lucky middle school kid would probably come and pick them up.
It seemed like a waste, but I didn’t need them anymore. If anything, they’d be a nuisance.
How could I be holding on to dirty magazines when I was about to head to my death?
Ahh! A guy had to be more careful on his way home from buy-ing a dirty magazine than on any other itinerary─had I not known that damn well?
My intensity as a human had plummeted and crashed.
“………”
As I began to head back and return to that street lamp, tears began to fall from my eyes, too.
My parents.
My two little sisters.
As someone who had avoided human contact, those were about the only people who came to mind─and the fact that there were only four of them was enough on its own to make me cry.
It’s not as if my family was particularly close. Especially after I began high school and started to fall behind, a weird, unbridgeable gap seemed to yawn open between me and my parents.
I didn’t dislike them or hate them. It must have been the same for them, too.
Simply, a gap had formed.
These things happened during adolescence─I’d explained it to myself that way, but if I knew this was going to happen, I’d have talked to them more.
Snuck away and went missing, eh?
Ahh… My sisters would probably deduce that something had happened to me on the way home from buying dirty magazines, even though I’d thrown them away.
Oh well.
Even they wouldn’t air our family’s dirty linen.
I loved you, mes soeurs.
“……”
I wiped away my tears.
Hey, come to think of it, not having many people to remember was a good thing─if I had friends or something, I’d run out of time. In fact, the choice I was now making seemed possible only because I hadn’t built any relationships beyond family.
And so I returned to the street lamp.
The blond vampire was still there, just as I had left her.
She wasn’t even crying anymore.
She wasn’t screaming anything, either.
Though she was sniffing and hiccupping, she seemed to have given up.
“Don’t give up, stupid!”
I ran over to her as I screamed the words, leaned in, and then─
I thrust out my own neck.
“You’ll do the rest, I take it?”
“…Huh?”
She opened her eyes. Surprise overtook her face.
“S-So you’re good with it?”
“Of course I’m not, dammit─”
Bastard, bastard, bastard…
Why?
How did things end up this way?
“H-How? Of course I know how!” I screamed. “It’s because I’ve wasted my whole life not doing a single worthwhile thing.”
I screamed with everything I had.
“There isn’t a single reason for me to bother staying alive, not a single reason for me to value my own life over someone else’s, the world wouldn’t care one bit if I died!”
Neither beautiful, nor pretty.
If that was my life, then to allow this beautiful thing to live…
Shouldn’t the choice be for me to die?
Wasn’t that the logical conclusion?
I was but a worthless human.
The vampire was a greater creature─wasn’t it?
“I swear, I’ll make something better of my next life. I’ll be reborn as someone who’s glib, who dances around relationships, who doesn’t feel guilty over every little detail, who can leave things to chance without having to worry so much, who doesn’t feel any doubts about insisting on getting his way, and who’s able to blame everything bad in his life on others! And that’s why─!!”
So I said, at least uttering the words myself my point of pride as a lower being.
“I’ll help you. Suck my blood.”
“………”
“I’ll give it all to you. Don’t leave a drop behind, wring me dry.”
“Tha…” For the first time since she was born─I’m speculating here─Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade gave thanks to a being other than herself. “Thank you…”
Sshink.
A sharp pain ran through my neck, and I realized that I had been bitten by her.
I instantly began to lose consciousness.
And with my last wisp of awareness, I remembered.
Tsubasa Hanekawa. Her.
If I had friends or something, I could run out of time─okay?
Now, that was close. If I’d thought about her just a little earlier, I might not have made it─talk about annoying.
Well, fine.
We’d spent no more than ten short minutes together, but if I was going to die embracing my recollections of coming across Hanekawa, that wasn’t so bad. And no, in this case, I don’t mean my recollections of Hanekawa’s underwear.
Seriously, what kind of way to go would that be?
Let me act cool in my final moments, at least?
And so, that is
how I, Koyomi Araragi, after seventeen years and change, met my abrupt, unannounced, and unexpected end─or should have.
004
I snapped back into consciousness.
It honestly felt as though I had been reborn.
Or rather, as if I had been revived.
“Oh! It was all a dream,” I tried and yelled.
Of course, it wasn’t a dream─if it had been a dream, I’d have come to in my room.
But this was not my room.
In fact, it was a place I’d never seen before. My little sisters, who woke me up every morning, were not there either.
“……”
Still.
I wanted to try going back to sleep again and again until I finally got the “It was all a dream” ending.
What was this place…an abandoned building?
I knew I was inside some sort of man-made structure, but…thick boards had been nailed across the windows to shut them tight, and all the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling had been shattered, without exception…
I turned my attention to my posture.
I seemed to be lying down. The floor was made of linoleum, but was horribly cracked.
I moved just my head around to get a look at my surroundings─what was that thing on the wall?
A blackboard?
And…desks?
Seats?
…A classroom?
So this was a school… But it couldn’t be Naoetsu High. I could tell that much. And…it didn’t really feel like a school.
I was, after all, a high school student.
Though it wasn’t my school, I could at least tell if I was actually in one regardless of all the trappings.
What was it, then?
What kind of place other than a school had a blackboard and tons of desks and chairs?
Then I understood. The atmosphere─it was a cram school. This had to be a cram school building.
But, uh, judging by how the place looked, it couldn’t be in use?
The windows, the lights…maybe it had gone bankrupt? Or did it just look that way because it was so dim in─wait, dim?
Hmm?
Why was I─in a room with blocked windows that not a single beam of light seemed to enter─able to see so clearly?
I could tell it was dark. It definitely didn’t seem bright. I shouldn’t have been able to see the tip of my own nose, it was that dark, but I could see.
I could see clearly.
But…maybe there was nothing to it? Were my senses a little confused because I’d just woken up?
Wondering, I raised my body.
“…Ow!”
I’d bitten the inside of my mouth.
Huh?
Wait, were my canines always this long?
I stuck a finger inside my mouth to see what was going on, and─
Moving my arm in order to move my finger, I realized, only then, that my splayed arm was being used as a pillow by a little sleeping girl.
“……”
What?
A little girl?
“…Whaaaa?!”
Indeed, a little girl.
She seemed to be about, oh, ten years old?
A blond girl wearing a fluffy dress that matched her, her skin so far beyond white that it seemed translucent.
Exhaling tiny breaths, she was fast asleep.
“……”
All of it was baffling.
Why was I there, where was I, and who exactly was this blond girl? Not a single thing made sense…but I was certain that I was in a bad spot!
That she was a little girl wasn’t bad on its own.
But when you start talking about “unfamiliar little girls,” things really start to sound criminal!
“H-Hey…w-wake up.”
I tried shaking the safest spots on the blond girl’s body that I could think of (like her upper arm).
“Nngh.”
When I did, the blond girl began to groan with apparent displeasure.
“Just five more minutes…”
Such a scripted reply, little blond girl.
She turned in her sleep, as if she was annoyed.
“C-C’mon, I said wake up!”
I continued to shake the blond girl’s body, paying no mind to her reaction.
“…Just ‘x’ more minutes.”
“How much longer is that?!”
“…Four-point-six billion years or so?”
“That’d be enough time for another Earth!”
As soon as I yelled my retort at her, I put my hands to my mouth in a hurry.
Right.
Come to think of it, if I did wake her up, wouldn’t I be worse off?
Clearly, searching for a solution on my own was the best course of action. Of course, speaking of solutions, I didn’t even know what my problem was…
I decided to start off by looking at the wristwatch on my left arm.
Lessee.
The time was─4:30.
No good. I couldn’t tell whether it was morning or evening from my wristwatch. I searched around for my phone…and found it.
The time on its screen stated that it was actually 16:32. The date was…March 28th?!
Umm… I thought back to the last time I’d checked my phone for the same reason, and back then─the date had just changed, and hadn’t it become March 26th?
Two whole days had gone by?
“…No.”
Even if it wasn’t a dream…how much of that was true, I wondered.
That.
Those memories─how accurate were they?
I gently pulled my arm from under the girl’s head, careful not to wake her. My first goal seemed to be to figure out where I was.
Sneaking, I headed toward the door of the room (classroom?)─which was unlocked. Well, it was more like it was off of one of its hinges, making it a very shabby excuse for a door. This dispelled my fear that I was being imprisoned in a mysterious facility (it may seem ridiculous, but I was actually quite worried about that possibility).
Sure, a cute little blond girl, but what gain could there possibly be in kidnapping me…
As I exited the door, I immediately noticed the stairs. A marker by the floor read “2F.”
The second floor?
There were stairs leading both up and down. I thought for a moment about which to take─but the commonsense choice was the first floor. First and foremost, I had to get out of the building.
On the other side of the stairs was what appeared to be an elevator, but I didn’t have to approach it to know that it didn’t work.
I climbed down the stairs.
“…Okay, Hanekawa’s number and email address is in my phone’s contacts list, so I did run into her after the closing ceremony… And my memories before that must be fine, too.”
So those panties were no dream. Even if it was like a dream.
“I have less money in my wallet, and I have a receipt…so I definitely bought those youth-oriented magazines on women’s fashion, too.”
Though my memories were slightly altered, I pretended not to notice and continued.
“But what happened after that…just doesn’t seem like it could be real.”
Even if it wasn’t all a dream.
Maybe I’d misrecognized what had happened.
For example─there was an injured woman who had been hit by a car…and I was so surprised when I saw her…that I passed out on the spot?
Hrmm.
It was a bit of a stretch, but I had to start somewhere.
After that…someone carried me here when I fainted, and…nope. No imaginative tinkering could make sense of it. You’d just call an ambulance.