by Nisioisin
“A good question,” Kissshot replied. “And one we won’t know the answer to until we try to find out.”
“I’d rather not.”
The two of us kept up our conversation, equal parts celebration and review, until before dawn. Around the time I finally began to feel sleepy, Oshino returned.
He wore the same Hawaiian stuff as always. He did seem to own multiple shirts, but they uniformly featured psychedelic designs like it was a political statement of some sort.
He was empty-handed when I met him at the crossroads, but at some point, he had obtained the bare minimum of daily sundries and supplies. He seemed to be no stranger to camping out.
“…Speaking of which, your dress never seems to get any dirtier. How does that work?”
“Hm? Well, vampire clothes are almost a part of our bodies,” replied the ever-dress-clad Kissshot, even though I looked like the frontman of a rock band with my left sleeve torn courtesy of Dramaturgy. “He turned to mist along with his attire, did he not?”
“So his clothes are a part of him just like those wavy great-swords.”
“Attire owes more to an ability to generate matter. At times I, too, wield a sword in battle, but unlike Dramaturgy, I employ my powers of matter generation to do so, not those of transformation.”
“That’s amazing…”
Where are you, laws of conservation of energy and mass?
Oh well. Something must have happened to them.
And in due course─
“Welcome back, Oshino.”
“I’m ho-o-ome!”
The man waved casually, a Boston bag in his hand─could Kissshot’s right leg be inside?
“Good job, Araragi.”
“I didn’t really do that much.”
“What’re you talking about? You put in some hard work. I know, I was watching over you from the shadows.”
“…You were?”
“Yep,” Oshino said, nodding. “So guess what, I also know that you made a girl pull up her own skirt.”
“……”
I recalled feeling a bit happy when I’d mistaken Hanekawa hiding in the shadows of the school for Oshino, but now I only felt embarrassed.
But he really was watching, huh…
Still, why say that in front of Kissshot?! Look, she’s tilting her head disapprovingly!
“Um…Oshino?”
“Oh, no need to worry. I was watching you from the front, so I couldn’t see that girl’s panties from my angle.”
“That’s not what I was worried about!”
“You’ve got a good friend. Is she a classmate?”
“We’re in different classes. But yeah…she’s a friend. Her name is Tsubasa Hanekawa. She’s a class president among class presidents,” I said, though it was embarrassing in its own way.
Huh, Oshino mumbled noncommittally. “In any case, you should properly explain the situation to any witnesses─especially her, since she seemed like a smart one.”
“That was my plan. I don’t know how to explain it, though.”
“There’s always the option of pushing her away.”
“I’ve already tried. And failed.”
“Did you, now. Well, you are dealing with a girl. There’s no such thing as being too sensitive.”
“I don’t think it matters if I’m dealing with a boy or a girl in this situation.”
“What’s this, now? Is that really your level of awareness? Unlike girls, boys don’t come up with creative dance routines, do they?”
“…Man, you say that like girls have more originality, but it’s just that only they have a creative dance component in P.E.”
What a way to judge me and my originality.
“But Araragi, you’re the one who’ll be fretting because you can’t dance when the story of our everyday lives gets turned into an ani-me.”
“Why would our everyday lives get turned into an anime?!”
“Because a drama CD can’t convey that wonderful face you make when you act the straight man.”
“Our everyday lives were a drama CD?!”
“It’ll be fun, though. It’ll be like the ending of Demon-Lord Hero Legend Wataru.”
“I don’t think I was even born when that was on the air!”
“You say that, but I see your Kyocera phone. The prospect is so on your mind.”
“What sort of roundabout appeal am I making?!”
But point taken, it was a mystery to us boys what the girls did during creative dance class… Honestly, I didn’t have the first clue.
“Well, being a man myself, I don’t exactly know what they do, either,” Oshino admitted. “But I bet they could never show to boys the kinds of immodest dances they─”
“What? Now you’ve got me interested!”
“Why else would those classes only be for girls?”
“Hmm.”
I had a feeling he was on the wrong track, but it was also true that boys were always out on the athletic field during P.E. when the girls were inside doing creative dance. Was that like quarantining?
“Oh, but Oshino, speaking of girls only, there’s another thing about Phys Ed that makes me wonder. During health classes in middle school, there were just a couple of times when they split up the boys and the girls. These were lectures and had nothing to do with stamina and all. I wonder what the girls were learning then.”
“Araragi, that─” Oshino began, but he thought better of it and coughed mid-sentence. “That, I don’t know. There are some things even I don’t know.”
“Yup. I thought so.”
“Hey, why don’t you ask that Tsubasa Hanekawa girl when you explain the situation to her? I bet she’ll tell you.”
“Oh, that makes sense. Good idea.”
What was it that I was feeling?
The air was buzzing with a faint degree of malice…
“There,” Kissshot finally stepped in. “Done chatting?”
“Hm? Oh─ha hah, you seem to be in good spirits too, Heartunderblade. Anything good happened to you lately? Sure it did.”
Laughing, Oshino undid the zipper of his Boston bag.
He then stuck his hand inside─and pulled out Kissshot’s right leg.
“……”
It had been placed inside as-is. Not kept in a case or wrapped in plastic. Just the bare leg, stuffed inside. Like something a sick murderer would do…
It was an adult woman’s leg. Slender─and pretty. Neither bleeding nor rotting, no doubt because it was a vampire’s leg…
“He really did give it back.”
Dramaturgy. The vampire-slaying vampire.
“That’s what a negotiator is for. I wish you’d at least put that much trust in me─there’s nothing more important than a relationship based on trust, you know. There’s no negotiating without it. They might be expert vampire hunters, but I’m a pro in my own right, and on such a point I’d never let them breach a contract─here, Heartunderblade.”
Oshino casually handed Kissshot her right leg, and she took it from him.
What a sight.
“…Wait, what’re you going to do? That leg doesn’t match your current size… You aren’t just swapping them, are you?”
“I do this,” Kissshot said.
Cradling her right leg with both arms, she opened wide and sunk her teeth into it.
From there, she simply began eating.
Chew chew. Chomp chomp. Gnaw gnaw.
Meat and bone together.
“……”
Okay, no anime adaptation.
A ten-year-old girl eating the right leg of an adult woman…and apparently finding it pretty tasty.
“Hm?” Kissshot glanced in our direction. “Don’t be standing there gaping, fools─leave me to myself as I eat. Where are thy manners?”
“Uh huh…”
Whatever, it wasn’t like I wanted to watch.
Hardly needing the prodding, Oshino and I left the classroom, went out into the hallway, and closed the
door without looking back.
Oshino was snickering.
What was so funny? All I could do was sigh.
“By the way, Oshino. While Kissshot is taking her meal, there was something I wanted to ask you.”
“Hm? What is it?”
“You must already know if you were watching, but Dramaturgy blew away my left arm─but I recovered instantly. So fast that ‘recovered’ isn’t the right word. So why didn’t Kissshot’s limbs regenerate at all?”
“Don’t you think it’s because Heartunderblade had lost nearly all of her immortal force by the time you met her?”
“Well, yes, I did think of that. But when my hands were cut off, the old ones disappeared by the time I was healed. So I thought maybe Kissshot’s limbs might have disappeared, too─but that wasn’t the case, either. I was wondering why. They didn’t regenerate, and they didn’t disappear…”
“That kid is a rare breed, Araragi,” Oshino answered without holding back. “Those guys want her body intact─to steal it and make it their own.”
“……”
“Intact, but piece by piece. In other words, it wasn’t her limbs that they took from her as much as her existence as a vampire. That’s why the severed limbs neither regenerate nor disappear. It’s an extremely bothersome thing they’re doing. Denying her limbs the opportunity to disappear also blocks their regeneration─when you think about it, it’s a very good way to disable an aberration slayer. Araragi, you ought to be careful too,” Oshino said, his tone turning vicious. “It seems like Dramaturgy actually wanted you to join him, but you’re Kissshot’s thrall. Who’s to say they won’t steal your body to make a specimen out of you?”
“R-Really?”
“Ha hah! You bought it. Well, it’s a unique technique that can’t be used very frequently. Don’t worry, they wouldn’t try─and it probably took all three of them to do it, anyway. With only two of them left, the risk is already gone.”
“…Which one do I face next?” I asked. “Episode or Guillotine Cutter?”
“The order is up to them, so I can’t say for sure, but I think it’ll be Episode. I’ll try to set things up as soon as I can. That way you won’t have to waste any time going back to being human.”
“Oshino.” I felt a little hesitant, but I decided to ask the question─I needed to know for sure before talking to Hanekawa. “Am I…really going to be able to become human again?”
“I don’t see why not, as long as you can get back all of Heartunderblade’s arms and legs. Isn’t that what the kid said?”
“Well, that’s the thing─isn’t there the possibility that Kissshot is lying? I can see how she might be in order to get her limbs─”
“Hey.”
Tap.
I’d been poked in the head.
“You shouldn’t distrust her like that, poor girl.”
“But…”
“I can’t believe how ungrateful you are, saying that about someone who saved your life.”
That’s what Oshino said.
Ungrateful? Saved my life? Did he just say that Kissshot saved my life, and not the other way around?
“What’s with that face, Araragi? Something good happen to you?”
“…Don’t talk like you see through me.”
“I do see through you. Yes, you threw your life away for Kissshot’s sake. You presented your neck to her and her fangs. I think it’s a wonderful thing you did─a beautiful act. But you know, Araragi. Normally, you would have died there.”
My blood wrung dry.
Not a single drop of my bodily fluids left.
I was supposed to have died there.
No─I did die there once, for certain.
“But you came back to life. As a vampire, of course, but you’ve been allowed to keep your sense of self.”
“Isn’t that because there’s a rule set in stone? If a vampire sucks your blood, you turn into a vampire, right? Yes, I may not have died for good there, but to say that she saved my life─”
“Set in stone? Where did you hear that one?” Oshino grinned, again as if he saw through me. As if he could see through all the fear and distrust that had settled in my heart like sediment.
“That’s what Kissshot said.”
“It’s just what she said, no? Haven’t you considered the possibility that that’s when she was being a liar?”
“Liar.”
Liar?
That’s when she was being a liar?
But─why tell such a lie?
“I don’t mean to take Heartunderblade’s side, so I’ll spill the beans here─there are two patterns when a vampire sucks a human’s blood. It’s either as a nutrition supply, in the way of eating, or it’s a way to create a thrall and servant.”
The two are completely distinct, Oshino said with a slight smile.
“Well, a vampire does receive a bit of nourishment when creating a thrall─but if she’d sucked your blood simply to feed on it, she surely wouldn’t be missing her skills to such a degree, even if fully recovering was still unlikely.”
“No, but─”
That may have been true.
Kissshot had said as much─under that street lamp. My body’s worth of blood could tide her over.
Her current figure.
A ten-year-old girl’s figure.
Did that really tide her over? Did that really nourish her?
She was like a schoolchild without any lunch money.
“At the moment, all I’m seeing are her powers of healing. It looks like she exhausted her skills just to form that body and even lost her all-important power to suck blood.”
“What? Really?”
“Really. The form she’s taken right now is something of an emergency-use-only one─she’s maintaining her vitality at the cost of sealing most of her skills. Must’ve been the most she could do with all four of her limbs severed. If she’d sucked your blood as simple food, she’d surely be in much better shape.”
“So…” I began to think, straining my inadequate brain and nonexistent knowledge to their limits in order to connect the dots, “in order to get her limbs back from those three, she had to make me her thrall, even if it meant temporarily losing most of her skills down to her ability to suck blood?”
“That’s not it.” Oshino waved his hand sideways. “You could look at it that way, and that’s probably what she’d say if you asked her. But I think it would be an excuse she made up after the fact. What I think─is that she couldn’t bring herself to kill you.”
“……”
“Not only Heartunderblade, but vampires in general don’t particularly like to create thralls. Even if they’re dying, they’d rather not create a thrall just in order to survive. Heartunderblade─there’s a heart under that blade. She seems to be a very different vampire from the one I’d heard about─turning you into her thrall must have been the only way for her to stay alive without killing you.”
Saved my life.
If that was true─then indeed, Kissshot had saved my life.
That had to be it.
When Kissshot first called out to me, she wasn’t planning on making me her thrall. She simply meant to nourish herself, to feed.
To tide herself over.
But─she said thank you.
To a worthless human.
To me, for sticking out my neck.
“When you woke up here, Heartunderblade was sleeping by your side, wasn’t she? Using your arm as a pillow. Doesn’t that mean she was nursing you around the clock?”
“Around the clock…”
“A fresh thrall always has the risk of going into a frenzy. She was on the lookout to make sure that didn’t happen. Or maybe it would be better to say she was watching over you. And then…afterwards too, when you carelessly tossed yourself under the sun, she didn’t hesitate to rush into the sunlight to save you─braving the risk of her own body evaporating as well.”
That said, Oshino added, “Maybe it’s close to the kind of
affection humans feel for their pets─but at the very least, Heartunderblade is true to you.”
“True, huh?”