by Nisioisin
I absolutely don’t like saying this about my savior, but to be frank, he’s the sort that I’m least comfortable around.
Even so.
I made up my mind and said, “I don’t have that kind of money saved up…but if I can pay you when I have it, and you won’t bother me for it, and if you also don’t need any guarantor or collateral…I’ll take it on.”
There was nothing else I could do. It was heartbreaking to have to take on a debt at my young age, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“All right, deeal. Ha hah! Thanks for your business, as they say,” Oshino cried, his tone cheerful to the point of being off. “Oh, and I’ll be staying overnight here starting today. Hope I’m not too much of a nuisance. Well, actually, I’d had my eye on this place ever since coming to this town. I had to do the right thing and let Heartunderblade have it, but there really is no better abandoned building in town. So, what now? Wanna form a huddle to psych us up for tomorrow and what it’ll bring?”
Oshino said this in a most un-psyched posture, still lying down─and of course, neither Kissshot nor I took him up.
Once again, midnight had come and gone without my noticing. It was now March 29th.
Speaking of tomorrow─today was already tomorrow.
007
Dramaturgy.
A massive man over seven feet tall.
A dual wielder of wavy greatswords, apparently known as flamberges.
A mountain of a man─a ball of pure muscle.
The hairband he wore to hold back his hair stood out, too.
And─he was a vampire hunter who had taken Kissshot’s right leg from her.
After this and that─though to be honest, only Oshino knew what this and that were, and I had no idea why things turned out as they did─I was facing him first.
“Phew…” I sighed, slumping my shoulders, a little hunched over as I walked around the town at night once again.
The date was March 31st. The last day of the month.
If I took too long, midnight would come and it would be April Fool’s Day… I needed to be careful. Don’t get me wrong, I was already about to be in my last year of high school, so it’s not as if I had any particular feelings about April Fool’s Day. It was simply a matter of my mood.
While I have no feelings about April Fool’s Day in particular, I don’t like days that are like special events.
“Dramaturgy is a vampire.”
I’d just been told that.
Moments before I was going to leave, in that second-floor classroom, Kissshot gave me another lecture about Dramaturgy.
This bit was new to me, though.
“V-Vampire?”
So naturally, I was surprised.
“He’s─a vampire?”
“…Could ye not tell by the sight of him? Or are there humans who boast his frame? I’ve never heard tell of any in my five hundred years.”
“……”
Well, she was right. He was more than just tall or muscled, he was on a different level. Still, did she have to look at me like I was an idiot?
“But why would a vampire be a vampire hunter? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Vampires who slay their own kind are not particularly uncommon. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a vampire for a vampire, eh?”
“Wouldn’t that make him a traitor, though?”
“We’ve no such concept,” Kissshot said.
Even though Dramaturgy had, in fact, stolen her right leg from her, I didn’t catch any traces of resentment in her voice.
“Or do ye mean to say that humans do not kill one another?”
“……”
“Listen, as far as I know, no species of animal exists that does not kill its own kind. No, even among plants, trees rob one another of nutrients.”
Though strictly speaking, she added, vampires are not living beings.
What a fine detail to point out.
“Even among plants, huh? Anyway, I get it…but you do need to tell me those kinds of things.”
“Hmm. I suppose so. In my weakened state and in this form, both my thought and memory must be slightly impaired.”
“So, what should I do?”
“Oh, nothing special. Merely have a firm grasp of the characteristics of a vampire. And I’ve already taught thee, have I not?”
Advice.
Though her offhand remark hardly merited that name.
“I doubt Dramaturgy would use the tactic, given his position, but do be careful not to let him suck thy blood. Vampires who have their blood sucked by another vampire will see their very existence wrung dry.”
That was all she said.
…For some reason, Kissshot’s attitude ever since I woke up made it almost seem like she thought highly of me.
Like I would win anyway.
Like I just needed to hurry off and fetch her limbs.
Like I ought to, ye imbecile, get off my butt already.
Maybe it was this high estimation of me that kept her from scolding me to any great degree even when I failed. But while I was glad of her high estimation, I couldn’t help but feel that she was overestimating me.
Well, the fact was that she saw me as her thrall and servant. She sang her own praises as a legend and the strongest, so she must have conferred that valuation on me as well.
Still, you know?
“……”
I walked forward slowly, stopping and starting intermittently, reading a book.
Its title: Aikido from Step One!
It was a martial arts training manual.
“Hmm…”
The first place I’d headed after leaving the abandoned cram school was the one major bookstore in town. The very same bookstore I went to before meeting Kissshot below that street lamp. I was on my second attempt, and possibly what you could call my first serious one, so I’d been expecting more constructive advice from Kissshot. Since I didn’t have that to rely on, I needed to see to the matter myself.
And that is why I had the book.
By the way, buying a martial arts training manual on its own was embarrassing, so along with it I purchased a guide on how to play baseball and a book of lists of suggested classical music.
Though…
What did it mean that I was able to buy dirty magazines on their own while I couldn’t overcome my shyness about buying such a manual on its own?
Thinking about that, I read as I walked─and soon, I had scanned through all of its pages.
Hmph.
At nighttime, it was convenient having eyes that could see in the dark…but what I was doing seemed far too much like a stopgap solution.
It wasn’t clicking at all.
But then, I was reminded that the older of my two little sisters practiced a martial art.
Was it karate?
Right, while I may have had zero experience in real fights, if I counted scuffles with my sister, then I was quite seasoned… She didn’t really know how to hold back.
But then, I realized what I was thinking and chuckled bitterly. I was about to fight a vampire, of all things. And not only that, it was a duel with a vampire-slaying vampire, and I was trying to learn from some last-minute cramming and fights with my little sister. I was being absolutely ridiculous.
Sheesh.
I really couldn’t act serious, could I?
I was just a devil-may-care kind of guy when it came down to it. When exactly had I given up on living an honest life? And just then─
“Is that you, Araragi?”
I heard a voice from behind me. I turned around─and saw Tsubasa Hanekawa there.
She was wearing her school uniform, even though it was spring break. She looked the exact same as she did when school was in session, down to her glasses and braided hair.
“Oh─Ha-Hanekawa.”
Wh-Why was she here?
There wasn’t anything special about the location. It was just a point along the shortest route between the book
store and the “duel site” Oshino had decided on.
A regular residential area, like the crossroads where I’d been attacked by the three.
Huhhh? Did Hanekawa live around here?
Don’t tell me she picked up on the trigger word “honest” running through my head and was here to follow up? Was she that aggressive? Well, that couldn’t be it, could it.
Naturally─I had begun staring at Hanekawa.
“Hmm?” She tilted her head, then suddenly held down the front of her skirt with both hands. “Oh, no. I’m not giving you a look today.”
“……”
This woman…
She delivers a line like that with a straight face?
So adorable, dammit!
“Wh-Wh-Wh-What do you m-m-mean m-mean m-mean mean b-b-b-by th-th-that?”
I tried to play it off coolly, but instead I sounded like I was trying to rap.
My voice was cracking. The reaction of someone who knew damn well.
“Hmm? So you forgot what happened?” Hanekawa said in wonderment, pouting her lips.
Forgot? Me, forget?
If anything, I’d expected Hanekawa to forget about our encounter that day soon afterwards.
“Even after you saw my panties.”
“……”
“After staring right at them.”
She remembered. Remembered it devastatingly well.
“Panties? Oh, you mean those items of clothing used in this country for protection against the cold, worn below the torso?”
“Don’t act like you’re from a different culture.”
“…N-No! This is a misunderstanding, it’s all a misunderstanding! I only saw the lining of your skirt! That was the only thing I was paying attention to, the lining of your skirt!”
“That’s pretty perverted in its own way,” she laughed at me.
She laughed at me…
No, that wasn’t the issue here.
“What are you doing here, Hanekawa?”
“Hmm? Going for a walk? I guess?”
“What, at this hour?”
The time was nine at night. Right on the borderline of when it was and wasn’t normal for─putting aside people like me─a serious student like Hanekawa to be out. No?
“I should ask you the same thing, Araragi. Why are you out here at this hour alone trekking like the Magnificent Seven?”
“How do I even trek like the Magnificent Seven all alone?”
“Hmm? What’re you reading, Araragi? Is that a book about baseball?”
“Um.”
I started by putting my manual away.
I doubted she’d be able to figure out that I’d become a vampire just from my behavior─but since vampires don’t show in mirrors (so they say), I honestly couldn’t tell how I was coming across at that moment.
Still, I had to hide what needed to be hidden.
First, my canines. I would be fine as long as I didn’t open my mouth too wide as I spoke…I bet?
Apart from that─the wound on my neck?
The wound from when Kissshot bit me─but even if Hanekawa spotted it, I would be able to explain it away.
As far as changes outside of my body, being a vampire I didn’t have a shadow─but as long as I didn’t walk too close to a street lamp, she probably wouldn’t notice.
What concerned me more than anything was how my clothes smelled. Being a vampire, I didn’t worry about my body odor in the least, but nor did I have a change of clothes or access to a bath in that abandoned cram school.
I really needed to just go and buy a change of clothes…
I wanted to take a bath, too, just because.
But I basically wanted to allot whatever precious money I had in my wallet to the war effort… The phone charger cost more than I expected, and after buying the books, I was essentially out of spending money. Maybe I really needed to go by home at some point?
“What, is that book something you don’t want me seeing? Hey, could it be something dirty?”
“Don’t be stupid. I’ve never even touched printed matter as crass as that. I wouldn’t want to sully my soul.”
It was a blatant lie, but Hanekawa let me off the hook at that─cool person that she was.
“Well, yep, that’s about it.”
I didn’t know myself what I was yepping or what was about it, but I was focused on cutting the conversation short and splitting─partly because I had to hurry ahead after taking longer than I’d hoped to read my book.
But there was also a more concrete fear I had.
Wasn’t there a chance that I’d get her caught up in this?
I was a vampire, after all.
And so was the man I was about to meet.
There was no room for a regular person─Hanekawa─in that.
No matter how much of a model student or a class president, Hanekawa was a regular person.
“Hmm? Hold on. You’re such a fast walker, Araragi. It’s not every day we run into each other, we should take the chance to talk some more.”
While I thought I had managed to briskly turn my back to her and walk off, Hanekawa caught up to me.
Just like she’d done that day.
“Talk…about what?”
“Hmm? Right─okay, here goes. Araragi, what did you study today?”
“……”
What kinda small talk was that?
I hadn’t studied anything, duh.
Hadn’t I told her? I wasn’t the kind to study on my own during spring break.
Besides, since becoming a vampire my days and nights had completely reversed themselves, and in my mind “today” had just started.
“I focused mostly on math,” she said.
“M-Math, huh…”
Ever since I started high school and stopped caring, I’d failed a test in nearly every subject at least once.
But math was an exception.
It was thanks to my ability to score well on math tests that I was able to cling on to my life as a student at a selective private school. Even in the teachers’ lounge, you could find people who, fortunately, equated being good at math with being smart.
That said, did I have the confidence to take Hanekawa on about math right then? The answer was an emphatic no.
I wouldn’t stand a chance.
After all, if the rumors were true, Hanekawa knew her times tables up to five hundred.
Five. Hundred.
In other words, even a dizzying product like 456 times 321 was something she could supply without thinking.
Well, people who use abacuses can apparently do even more impressive things─but ultimately, no matter how difficult, math came down to multiplication and division. If you bypassed the hassle of multiplying and dividing, you spent significantly less time per question.
I was good at math precisely because it wasn’t a subject that benefited from a lot of memorization, but even math fell under that category for Hanekawa.
Maybe she was far more of a monster than any vampire.
“U-Unfortunately, all I studied today was Spanish.”
“Spanish? …Hunh,” Hanekawa said with a surprised expression.
Did that mean she believed me? I hadn’t actually expected her to.
“Too bad, I don’t know much Spanish.”
“Th-That really is too bad.”
“Yeah. Just enough for basic conversations.”
“……”
So she could handle basic conversations…
“Spasibo!” I yelled involuntarily.
“…‘Spasibo’ is Russian,” Hanekawa shot back. “Also, it doesn’t have any connotation of ‘wonderful’ if you wanna know.”
“……”
I wasn’t expecting to be hit with that kind of a correction.
Or rather─way to go, Hanekawa, you even guessed I’d used the Russian word thinking it meant “wonderful”…