by Nisioisin
Note to self: put up with it even if they’re a little tight or short.
While I wasn’t changing into them at that moment, I decided to at least check the jeans and began rummaging around the bottom of the backpack.
Then─I found a bag.
It was a paper bag from that major bookstore.
It felt like ten or so books were inside.
“…?”
When I pulled it out, for no reason really, Hanekawa told me, “Oh, those are presents. You bought an aikido book yesterday, right? The one that you left by the school gates. And judging by your story, you got it in order to fight that big person, right?”
“Well─yeah.”
So that was her appraisal of Dramaturgy. “Big person.”
She had some guts, didn’t she?
“In the end, the baseball guide I bought along with it came in handier.”
“Ah. The one you were reading when we met, right?”
“What are you getting at?”
Hanekawa nodded. “Well, you were right to try and prepare in the face of a tough battle─but I also thought that you were going about it the wrong way.”
“I don’t disagree with you there. You mean cramming will only help so much.”
She had seen me the day before. My crude style of fighting. How much I relied on luck, how I just took things as they came.
“No one would spend years practicing if they could master it by flipping through a book.”
“Oh, no no, that’s not what I meant,” Hanekawa said. “Aikido and baseball are both things that humans do, right?”
“…? Well, I guess an arm lock was useless against Dramaturgy─but if his regen wasn’t very good, breaking his arm might’ve had some effect?”
“Uhmm. You sound so rough. But that’s not it, either. This isn’t about who’s on the receiving end, but on the giving end. I’m talking about your side, Araragi.”
“Huh?”
“Aikido is a human fighting style─and baseball is a human sport. Your strength is clearly greater than a human’s right now, Araragi, so aikido or baseball or anything of the sort seems like it would only end up limiting your strength.”
“O-Oh.”
She was right.
In fact─a baseball was too light for me. The shot put was okay. It wasn’t until I grabbed that roller that it felt right.
All of my stats had been lifted at the same time so it was hard for me to be aware of it, but as I was, human techniques might actually just hold me back.
“So I think what you should be reading now are these,” Hanekawa said, opening the paper bag I’d taken from the backpack and showing me what was inside.
It was manga.
A straightforward superpowered school action series, at that. A boy in a school uniform was on the cover.
“……!”
“I looked for one with a vampire high schooler as the protagonist, but I couldn’t find one, so I went ahead and picked one where the main character is a boy who uses superpowers.”
“W-Went ahead and picked…”
“Just like this,” she said, opening up to a page where a boy, probably the protagonist, was running up a wall, “you can probably now move ignoring the laws of physics.”
“Uh huh…”
I was taken aback for a moment─but hold on. It might not be such a bad idea?
Actually─it was a pretty good one.
I was still clinging to the common sense I’d acquired as a human─according to Dramaturgy. There was weight behind his words, since he was a former human like me. And just like he said, I’d dug myself a hole during our battle because that sort of common sense had too much of a hold on me.
I was able to do a backflip, for crying out loud─surely I could run up a wall.
“Oh…I see.”
“I did read through it. It’s pretty fun.”
“Hm…”
I hadn’t heard of the manga before, but it did look fun.
“There’s a fantasy novel that I’d personally recommend, but I thought manga might be the most immediately effective solution considering your goals. Learning visually will help you remember better, too.”
“That’s definitely true.”
“Well, try using those as your yardstick. After that, pick out what you think you’d like.”
“…Thank you.”
And…I had yet to tell Hanekawa that I needed to face Episode and Guillotine Cutter after this. Talk about being prepared…
Gosh, she was no ordinary girl.
“Here. A bookstore gift card for then.”
“That’s beyond prepared!”
“Hm? Would you have preferred cash?”
“I can’t believe this!”
What was I?
In any case…I gratefully received what Hanekawa was considerate enough to offer me. Including the gift card.
I was seriously broke. From buying too many books.
“You’re a lifesaver, Hanekawa. I promise I’ll make it up to you some day.”
“Uh-uh. This is really all I can do, anyway.”
“All you can do? It’s more than enough.”
Honestly, it was heartening. Which, I supposed, also meant that I had been feeling disheartened.
I couldn’t call Oshino an ally─as for Kissshot, this was really her business, plus she was a vampire.
I hadn’t expected to feel so relieved from talking to someone.
No─it wasn’t because I’d talked to just anyone, but to a friend.
“Thank you. I mean it.”
“Oh, stop it. That’s what friends are for, right? Don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s anything else you want me to do, Araragi. This is about everything I can do at the moment, though.”
“Yeah. I’ll be counting on you.”
“Oh, right. Do you want me to clean this classroom?”
It looks like a total mess, she added.
Well, the building was abandoned.
No sooner than she’d spoken, Hanekawa began moving─but wait, I couldn’t actually let her do this.
“It’s fine. It was like this when we found it.”
“That’s no reason to leave it a mess. We ought to start where we can, and─hm? Hey, what’s this?” Hanekawa said, picking something up from the corner of the room.
For a moment, I didn’t have any idea what it was either. But only for a moment. It was yet another bag from that major bookstore─but neither the one Hanekawa had brought, nor the one with the aikido, baseball, and classical music books that I’d purchased the night before.
But I remembered seeing it.
And then I realized.
Yes. It was the bag with the two dirty books in it, the one I thought I’d thrown away on the first day of spring break.
“Mumble mumble.”
It was Kissshot, sounding half-asleep behind us.
“I had forgotten to tell thee. That bag thou had so preciously clung to was on the side of the road, so I brought it here with me for thee.”
“Y-Youuu!”
“Gzzt…”
Dammit, back asleep.
Ohhh no… Hanekawa was staring at the books inside.
A high school girl was staring at dirty books featuring high school girls…
“Um, when you encountered that vampire, you were…on the way back from the bookstore, right? On March 25th? The night of the day we first ran into each other?”
“……!”
Wow!
I couldn’t believe how perceptive she was!
B-But couldn’t she be misunderstanding the situation in the worst possible way here?!
“Hee-hee.”
Hanekawa looked up and turned to me, grinning from ear to ear. The flashlight was illuminating her from directly below, and it felt like I was facing an aberration.
She took one of the books from the bag and opened it to a random page.
Of all things, it contained a stunningly idiotic special feature on “Bespectacled Class Presid
ents.”
She asked me in the kindest of purrs.
“So. What’s this?”
011
Episode. A man with sanpaku eyes and a white traditional school uniform who carried on his shoulder, with one hand, a gigantic cross triple the size and the cube of the weight of his body.
Apparently, he was a vampire hunter. A man who slew vampires in order to collect bounties. A hit man, if you will.
And to add to that─he was supposedly a half-vampire.
Hunter of, and half.
Though he could even look juvenile, contrary to his appearance he was an expert hunter of vampires who’d taken Kissshot’s left leg from her. That was Episode.
“…He sure is late.”
Three days later─April 4th.
“Four” being homophones with “death” and an unlucky number in Japan, the date felt vaguely ominous to me, but I wasn’t complaining about such trifles.
I tried to check my wristwatch, only to realize that I’d forgotten to wear it─I thought I’d check my cell phone instead but had forgotten it too.
No good.
I wasn’t calm after all.
It was fine, though─like the vagabond he was, Mèmè Oshino, the man I’d most want to contact in a tight spot, didn’t own a cell phone.
To hear him say it, though, it was just that he hadn’t a clue when it came to gadgets. True, nothing seemed more far-removed from yokai and aberrations and such as a cell phone.
Either way, it was the night of April 4th.
I had once again come to the athletic field of Naoetsu Private High School at night.
For round two, of course.
To fight Episode, the second of the three vampire hunters.
I had been giving it a lot of thought over the past three days, but my ultimate decision was to show up empty-handed, like the time I battled Dramaturgy.
I’d accepted Hanekawa’s view on the matter.
“I think it would be better if you didn’t have any weapons. I mean, a normal weapon couldn’t handle your so-called vampiric strength, and even if we found one that could, what if the police pulled you over for a stop and frisk?”
“……”
She was all too right, but bringing it up at this stage?
“Hey, if that’s the deal, I think the authorities need to be stopping and frisking those three vampire hunters more than me.”
“But these people are professionals, aren’t they? They must have the know-how to avoid that sort of thing.”
“Hmph.”
Come to think of it, Dramaturgy could even turn his body into mist.
Plain human restrictions wouldn’t hinder them.
And so, that’s why I was bare-handed─and though it felt like I hadn’t learned my lesson from last time when I’d tried and failed to take on Dramaturgy’s dual-wielded wavy greatswords with my two empty hands, Hanekawa, her usual impressive self, had shared with me a number of observations she’d made simply by watching the battle from the shadows of the school building.
They were mostly red marks. But if I could put my experience to use this time…
As usual, Kissshot’s advice wasn’t very helpful─a flashback scene of how I sought it follows.
“A vampire hunter and a half-vampire─well, even I know that much vampire terminology, but couldn’t you give me some more details, Kissshot?”
Her body now a twelve year old’s, Kissshot had this to say in reply: “I forgot.”
She forgot…
She was puffing her chest out as haughtily as ever─having gone from ten to twelve, which meant the onset of puberty, her chest was budding─but it certainly wasn’t a reply to be dispensing haughtily.
“Mm. My powers of recall have weakened. Oh, had I already mentioned that?”
“I do appreciate the humor, but…”
“Hmph. Wait one moment.”
With that, Kissshot held the fingers of her right hand in a straight line by her head and, without skipping a beat, dug the four nails into her temple.
The blond girl’s tiny right hand vanished into her head down to the wrist. Blood began to spurt out, evaporating and disappearing each time.
“H-H-Hey…”
“One moment. I’ll remember in no time.”
Kissshot proceeded to rummage around inside her own head, which is to say she was mushing around her brain. Not only blood, but a liquid like spinal fluid was also shooting out of the wound.
“…!”
No no no no no no no no no.
Forget an anime adaptation twice over.
What’s more, maybe her fingers were getting caught up in her ocular muscles, because her right eye made idiosyncratic movements like she was under demonic possession.
L-Literally searching through her memories…
I’d heard of some strange mnemonic devices before, but this took the cake.
“Ah.”
Kissshot finally removed her reddened hand. She wore a refreshed smile.
“I remember.”
“What…” I prompted as I watched the blood that stained her golden hair red evaporate before my eyes, “What did you remember?”
“As thou could surely tell from his attempts to win thee over, Dramaturgy does not hunt vampires out of any sort of hatred. But Episode is different. The fellow detests vampires.”
“He detests them? Why? He’s half vampire, right? Well, he’s a vampire hunter, so I didn’t think he’d be on our side or anything─”
“No, though it is difficult to say decisively with such a small sample size, most half-vampires come to hate vampires.”
“Why?”
“Well, to put it simply, ’tis because half-vampires are not accepted into the world of vampires. Nor is that reason enough for them to be accepted into the human world. And so─they hate their vampire blood.”
“Wouldn’t that make them hate humans just as much, though?”
“They do not think well of them, but what use is it hating those weaker than you?” Kissshot replied bluntly. “They may be but half-vampire, but their strength is leagues beyond the average human’s. Episode in particular seems to have a strong hatred of vampires. I’ve no knowledge of his upbringing─but I imagine I would prefer to stay ignorant of it. So do not assume that he will give up easily. While work may have driven Dramaturgy, emotions move Episode.”
“Huh.”
So he was less of a pro than Dramaturgy.
“While a half-vampire’s immortality is not as strong as a vampire’s, their breed is notable for their near lack of vampiric weaknesses. They are even capable of walking in daylight─and of casting shadows.”
“Huh… They cast shadows?”
“In other words, in exchange for half of their strengths, they eliminate nearly all of their weaknesses.”
“Ah…”
Okay. I shouldn’t be too quick to draw conclusions─but him not having any weaknesses was kind of rough.
“So, how can I beat him?”
“Eh? Well, by being thy usual self?”
“……”
Thank you, Kissshot, for your excessive faith in me.
And thus─the night of the battle had come.
For the past three days, I had been absorbed in manga. I couldn’t blame any onlooker for thinking that I was goofing off of or at least slacking off, but I’d covered nearly every superpowered school action series in serialization.
Oddly enough, reading manga out of necessity meant taking it slow no matter how much of a page-turner it was… But every day including that day, Hanekawa came to the abandoned cram school right after the sun set to bring me more manga, so it wasn’t as if I could stop. I’d even received a gift card, but I was told that it’d be best if I kept from going outside too much.
It was Oshino who told me that.
On the night of April 1st, right after Hanekawa left to go home, Oshino returned─and that’s when he told me. I regretted just missing my chance to introduce Hanekawa to hi
m, but then, he could have been waiting for her to leave, so I didn’t press the point.