by Nisioisin
But the time displayed on my cell phone had to be real.
Crap, I hadn’t been home for two days, and it would feel to them like three.
While it wasn’t my first time staying out overnight without permission, three days was stretching it. Compared to my little sisters’ wild behavior, three days out seemed altogether cute, but…I needed to at least call home as soon as possible.
At that point, I was still entertaining such optimistic thoughts.
The moment I stepped outside of the building, they were dashed. Avoiding rubble and metal and glass fragments and junk like strange signs, cans, and even cardboard boxes strewn about my feet (but really, why was I able to see so well in the dark?), I exited into an audaciously overgrown field of grass─and it happened as soon as I left the building.
My body.
My body, from head to toe─burst into flames.
I should’ve known. Why, despite it being late enough to call evening, the sun seemed so incredibly bright. But it was already too late. My body was on fire.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”
My shriek didn’t even sound like a voice.
“Pain” wasn’t the word.
My hair, my skin, my flesh, my bones, all of me─was on fire.
I was combusting─at an incredible speed.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
Vampires are…
Weak to the sun?
Vampires, creatures of darkness, are weak to the sun, hm?
And that’s why they don’t have shadows.
But what does that have to do with m─
“You fool!”
The voice echoed from inside the building as I rolled on the ground, making full use of any and all knowledge I possessed about flames engulfing my body (I recalled reading somewhere that doing this would work).
I looked, with blazing eyes that didn’t have an ounce of moisture left, looked in the direction of the voice, and there found the blond girl who had been asleep until just moments ago.
With a domineering glare that hardly suited a little girl, she yelled, “Get thee here at once!”
It was well and good for her to say that, but the pain was so extreme that my body wasn’t behaving as I wanted it to─and the blond girl must have seen this because she braced and leapt out of the building.
No sooner than she did, her body burst into flames.
But she seemed to not even mind, and running to my side and holding me up by my armpit, she began to drag me right along the ground.
All as her body was covered in flames.
She dragged me─right along the ground.
She didn’t seem to be all that strong. Her strength was that of a regular child.
She deserved some praise given how slender her arms were─but they weren’t strong enough to hold me up.
All she could do was drag me.
Drag me─with her body in blazes.
It was quite a feat to muster that much strength while on fire─but it took the girl a fair amount of time to drag me back into the building, or in other words, into the shade, where the sun’s rays didn’t reach.
But what really surprised me was what happened next.
My body.
The moment we entered the shade, the flames that engulfed both my body and the blond girl’s disappeared, as if by magic. And that wasn’t all─our bodies didn’t even have burns on them.
Despite those raging fires.
Our clothes weren’t even scorched. Not my hoodie, not my camouflage pants.
In fact, they didn’t seem so much as frayed.
Likewise for the blond girl’s fluffy dress.
“Wh-Wh-Whaa…?”
“Honestly,” the blond girl responded to my confusion, “what sort of dunce runs out under the sun with no warning? I take my eyes off of thee for a moment and look at what ye do. Have ye a death wish? Any average vampire would’ve evaporated in the blink of an eye.”
“…What?’
“Never go into the daylight again. With thy immortality turned to a curse, ye’ll be stuck in an eternal loop─burn, recover, burn, recover. Thy powers of recovery exhausting themselves or the sun setting─whichever comes first, ye’d live through hell. If an undead vampire could be said to live.”
“Whaaat.”
A vam─pire.
So─it really wasn’t a dream or some misunderstanding.
“Y-You mean you’re…”
Blond hair, dress.
And those cold eyes.
No, I thought, there was a huge age difference. While it may have been hard for me to make an accurate guess because the woman I’d encountered was fighting off death, I’d still say she looked, oh, twenty-seven or so.
She was clearly different from this ten-or-so-year-old girl.
Plus, her limbs. Her right arm, her left arm, her right leg, her left leg, the blond girl had them all. A ten-year-old girl’s limbs, straight and thin.
She was clearly different from that limbless woman.
But─
But they had some traits in common.
The white fangs I saw inside her mouth every time she spoke, for example.
“Mm,” she nodded, her attitude utterly domineering and proud. “Indeed I am Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade─you may call me Heartunderblade.”
She followed this up with a terrifying statement.
“Four hundred years have passed since I last created a thrall, and this was but my second time─yet it seems to have went well, judging by those regenerative powers. No sign of going into a frenzy, either. Ye spent quite some time asleep, I was beginning to worry.”
“Th-Thrall?”
“Indeed. And as a result, ye’ve…hm. Now that I think of it, I’ve yet to hear thy name. Ah, but what difference does that make? Thy past name henceforth has no meaning to thee. Be that as it may, servant─”
She laughed. It was a gruesome laughter.
“Welcome, to the world of the night.”
“…gh”
And so, that is how I, Koyomi Araragi, after seventeen years and change, met my abrupt, unannounced, and unexpected end─or should have.
But didn’t.
In a sense, though, my life really had come to an end.
No wonder it had felt like I’d been reborn. Because I’d literally come back to life.
A vampire.
A vein long since mined dry, whether in manga, movies, or games─one of those notions we now consider dated twice over.
But despite that, and despite being a high school student, I was fairly ignorant when it came to vampires.
Or rather, I didn’t know anything about them.
The extent of my knowledge was that they’re blood-sucking demons that don’t like the sun and don’t cast shadows─and even that I’d only recalled while talking to Hanekawa.
What else, I thought─oh yeah, did they hate garlic?
I wasn’t sure.
Which is why I didn’t know─that when a vampire sucks someone’s blood, that person turns into a vampire.
Having your blood sucked makes you one of them.
Having your blood sucked makes you a thrall.
I hadn’t known that I’d be forced to quit being human.
One of them.
A thrall.
I’d assumed the result would be death. That was the logical outcome of giving away all of the blood in your body─and I had offered her my neck ready to die.
But─this?
I was hardly prepared to be a vampire. But there was no point in saying so now─no point in crying over sucked blood.
I’d been wrung dry of blood by her─and preposterously, had become a vampire.
There was no need for me to prove it to myself.
My body burst into flames under the sun.
My body recovered in moments despite having burst into flames.
My eyes could see well in the dark.
And the canines in my mouth─fangs.
Clear
evidence, proof enough.
There was no need for me to search in vain for my shadow.
“Wh-Where am I?”
However. I, Koyomi Araragi, loser and chicken, not wanting to face the truth, started off with a softball question.
Second floor.
The two of us had returned together to the room where I regained consciousness. I seemed to be right about it being an abandoned building of some sort, at least, but the only room across all four of its floors where the windows were closed off with thick boards─in other words, where sunlight wouldn’t come in─was this one.
Yeah.
Even if I was able to regenerate, I still wanted to avoid going up in flames.
What was the word she used again? “Evaporate”?
“Mmh,” the vampire began, flipping back her blond hair, “they call it a ‘cram school’─though it seems to have gone out of business a number of years ago. Now it’s nothing more than an abandoned building. Convenient for concealing ourselves as we have been.”
“Huh…”
So it really was a cram school. And I was right about it being abandoned, too.
But “concealing ourselves”? Get off it.
That made it sound like we were in hiding. She’d chosen a place out of the public’s sight just so she could watch over me while I was unconscious, right?
“Okay, Kissshot. My next question is─”
“Stop,” she, Kissshot, interrupted. “I said to call me Heartunderblade.”
“But that’s way too long. Heartunderblade? I feel like I’m going to bite my tongue twice just saying it. You don’t want to mess up saying someone’s name, right? Kissshot is shorter and easier to say… Or am I not supposed to call you that?”
“Uh…” Kissshot started to say something but shook her head. Her golden hair floated quietly through the air. “If ye be fine with it, then ’tis fine─I have no reason to deny thee.”
What an odd way of putting it.
Oh, but if it wasn’t a Japanese name, then was Kissshot her first name? In that case, it’d be weird if I suddenly started calling her that…but did such commonsense rules of human conduct apply to vampires?
“And what is thy next question?”
“Umm…I’ve been…turned into a vampire…yes?”
This second question was the one I wanted to ask her the most.
Loser and chicken? Well, it was the kind that someone who didn’t want to face reality would ask, and as such fell in the softball category too. I didn’t have to ask her to know the answer.
“But of course,” she stated. “There’s no need for me to spell it out to thee now, is there─ye have become my thrall and my servant. Consider it an honor.”
“Your servant…”
She’d called me that earlier, too. Hmph…a servant. Strangely enough, the thought didn’t bother me.
“So why do you look like a child now? Last night…er, two nights before yesterday? When I met you, you were more─you know, grown-up, and─”
“Excuse me for being childish.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.”
More grown-up. And with all of her limbs severed.
That’s what I wanted to say.
“I wrung thee dry to the last drop, even so.”
She bared her fangs at me─and laughed. What she was saying was no laughing matter, but she laughed nonetheless.
“Yet that was still not nearly enough─which is why I’ve taken on an appropriate form. ’Tis better than dying, though I’m only able to sustain the bare minimum of immortality. Most all of my powers as a vampire have been curtailed─such an inconvenience.”
Still.
’Tis better than dying, she repeated.
She didn’t want to die, she said.
The image of her crying and sobbing floated through my mind. There wasn’t a single trace of it in the way she spoke now.
It was then that I realized─long after the fact─that I really did save this woman.
I’d saved a vampire. Tossing away my own life.
“As thou can see, I was able to regenerate my limbs, at least in form. There’s no meat in them─but they will suffice for the time being… But let me make our relationship clear for thee, servant. Though I may have taken on this guise, I am a vampire who has lived through five hundred years. Not to mention our master and servant relationship, in truth I am not one to be addressed as an equal by a newly born vampire such as thee.”
“O-Oh?”
“What a vague reply─do ye understand me?”
“W-Well, yeah.”
“Then as proof of thy submission to me, stroke my head!” she said, domineeringly.
……….
I stroked her head.
Sheesh, I thought, her hair’s so soft. There was so much of it, but it was like my fingers were gliding across it.
“Hmph. Good enough.”
“…This is proof of my submission?”
“Do ye not even know that?” she said haughtily.
It seemed as though vampires operated under different rules.
“How ignorant. But ignorant as thou may be, I am glad to have a pliant servant─a good master attracts good servants. However, servant,” Kissshot continued, glaring at me with her cold eyes, “ye saved my life. Saved it, even as I appeared in that unsightly manner to thee. Which is why I am of a mind to grant thee special permission to address me in that uncouth tone and to slur me by calling me Kissshot.”
“S-Slur you?”
Had I basically called her by her first name after all? I felt like I’d really messed up…but I couldn’t call her something else now, not after all that.
Still.
Kissshot had said another thing that bothered me.
─As thou can see, I was able to regenerate my limbs,
─at least in form.
It was true. While her petite, slender body was a ten-year-old girl’s, Kissshot did now have her arms and legs.
At least in form?
They had no─meat in them?
“And…I suspect that I will have to rely on thee in the days to come.”
“Huh?”
What was that supposed to mean?
That didn’t just bother me, it wholly preoccupied me.
“Uhh…and that means?”
“But don’t get carried away, my servant. A servant attends to his mistress as a matter of course. If I command thee to stroke my head, ye shall faithfully stroke it, no matter the time or place. Understand?” she said, puffing out her chest with pride.
Well, I say that, but she had a ten year old’s body, which meant she had no chest to speak of. It was more like a child trying to stand her tallest.
…Though of course, the phrase “puffing your chest out” doesn’t include “emphasizing your breast size” as a nuance. Then again…no, it seemed pointless to tease her about it. I couldn’t see her giving me a proper reply, either.
I’d rib her about that later─I needed to get around to asking her the one thing I wanted to know the most.
I lobbed a lead-in question.
“Why did you─turn me into a vampire?”
“Hm?”
“I was ready for you to suck me dry─for you to kill me.”
I’d even seen my life flashing before my eyes. I’d seen face after face─well, just four.
Or wait, had it been five?
I had a hard time remembering.
“It’s not as if it was intentional. One whose blood is sucked by a vampire is turned into a vampire, without exception. There was nothing more to it.”
“Oh. I see.”
If I had known that…would I have offered her my neck?
I’d been ready to be sucked dry.
I’d been ready to be killed, too.