Kizumonogatari

by Nisioisin

  “Don’t vampires feed on blood for their meals?”

  “Oh yeah, that’s right.”

  “Speaking of, Araragi. Do you ever get urges to suck blood or anything?”

  “Hm? Well, now that you mention it─no.”

  Despite being a vampire.

  Oshino said Kissshot didn’t seem to have the ability to suck blood right now─was it the same for me?

  I hadn’t even thought about it.

  “…Can you tell the difference in taste between Coke and Diet Coke, Hanekawa?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “I can’t, really.”

  “Huh. Okay, I just thought of something.”

  “Hm?”

  “A new product is developed by a beverage company. They’ve managed to create a diet cola that tastes the exact same as Coke.”

  “Nice.”

  “But the color is Blue Hawaii.”

  “Then it isn’t Coke!”

  I found it mildly funny and laughed. After laughing for a bit, I calmed down.

  A class president among class presidents.

  A model student.

  Excellent grades.

  With phrases like that overshadowing her, my mental image of Hanekawa was of a prim and proper stickler, a self-important class president, but when I actually spoke to her, she wasn’t like that at all.

  She said interesting things and was always considerate.

  Despite what she went through the day before, she had yet to blame me in any way.

  We’d seen each other every day since April began─if she hadn’t done that for me, I would most likely have lost heart.

  My unease that maybe I wouldn’t be able to turn back into a human. My unease over having to fight it out with expert vampire hunters─feelings of uncertainty assailed me when I let my guard down even for a moment.

  I doubted that Kissshot, who basically considered herself the strongest vampire, could understand such feelings─but Hanekawa helped me cope with them.

  It wasn’t just the night before. Hanekawa had rescued me, saved me many times over.

  I thought I knew, but until the previous day’s events I hadn’t realized for real what it meant, vacuously enough.

  That’s why─I had to talk to Hanekawa.

  There was something I had to talk to her about.

  “Hanekawa.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You should stop coming here.”

  “…Hm!”

  With a cheerful smile still on her face, Hanekawa stood up from her chair and walked over to me.

  “Well, I thought you might say that.”

  “Please, I don’t want you to feel hurt─it’s not like last time. Well, last time was partly about not wanting to get you mixed up in it, of course, but…a lot of it was my not being able to keep my emotions in check. I took it out on you, and I regret it. But this time is different.”

  “…How’s it different?”

  “When Episode’s cross took a chunk out of your side yesterday…I lost myself. I could feel the blood rising to my head…I thought I’d die.”

  “You, not me?”

  “Me.”

  My body was immortal─yet I thought I was going to die. Her wound hurt as if it were my own.

  “I talked to you about my intensity as a human, right?”

  “……”

  “Your getting wounded hurt like it was me who’d gotten wounded. No─it hurt more. Hanekawa, I’m─” Since the night before I’d been thinking of all the different ways to say it, but in the end I could only be direct. “I’m not so desperate to become human again that I’d do it at your expense.”

  “…At my expense?” Hanekawa said, sounding a bit confused. “I don’t feel like you’re treating me in such a way, Araragi.”

  “But don’t you wonder what you’re doing? Wasting your spring break for my sake at an important time in your life─and nearly dying in the process. Doesn’t that make you wonder what you’re doing?”

  “Not…at all?”

  Hanekawa shook her head from side to side as if being asked such a thing was the bigger quandary.

  “I’ve forgotten what happened then, but it was my own fault that I nearly died, right? If anything, you were the one who saved me.”

  “I’m not able to see it that way.”

  I knew that Hanekawa was being honest when she said what she said. I knew that she wasn’t just trying to consider my feelings.

  She wasn’t being insincere.

  She was sincerely a good person.

  But─she was that strong, and therefore precarious.

  “I just don’t get it.”

  “……”

  “I’m not confident that I’d be able to help you in the same situation. I’m not confident that, if our positions were reversed, I would be able to go that far. I’m not confident that I’d be able to show myself to a loose cannon like him if I had a body that could die─but you did it like it was nothing.”

  I tried to choose my words─but to no avail.

  I had no choice.

  There was only one word that could express the way Hanekawa was.

  “You scare me.”

  “…I’m scary?”

  “Honestly, you creep me out,” I said, my eyes downcast. “Please, I’m not saying that to hurt you─I just can’t understand why you’re going this far for me. I can’t figure out how you’d be this devoted to a classmate you only got to know the other day. It’s like you’re a saint or something.”

  A saint.

  Or perhaps the Madonna.

  “But your self-sacrifice is way too heavy a burden for me. I’m not big enough to bear it. Healing or not isn’t the issue─when I think of you being wounded for my sake, I…just freeze. It scares me so much that I can’t face Guillotine Cutter like this.”

  “It’s not self-sacrifice.”

  That was Hanekawa’s reply─

  And she sounded a little angry.

  “It isn’t self-sacrifice.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Self-satisfaction,” she said quietly. “You’re misunderstanding me, Araragi. I’m not that good of a person, and I’m not that strong of a person. I’m just doing whatever I feel like doing… I doubt there are many people out there as self-absorbed as I am.”

  “……”

  “If you came to know the real me, Araragi, I bet you’d feel disillusioned.”

  Stop putting a girl on a pedestal, she laughed.

  “I’m sneaky, and I think I’m tough. Enough to creep you out, actually.”

  “…How?”

  “How? In every way, I guess? Even with you, Araragi, I’m only doing this because I feel like it. There’s absolute no reason for you to feel bad.”

  “Hanekawa…”

  “But,” Hanekawa said, clapping her hands in front of her chest, and continuing with her hands still together, “if my presence is making things harder for you, then that really is putting the cart before the horse. You already have a pretty nice collection of superpowered school action manga, so maybe I’m done being your shopper. Reading more might cause everything to overflow. It does look like there’s nothing left for me to do.”

  “No, there is something you can do.”

  I was staring at Hanekawa.

  With my eyes still fixed on her, I said, “Wait for me.”

  “……”

  “At that school, once the new year starts. Wait for me.”

  I realized I was asking for a lot. It wasn’t like I had no idea how much pain and anxiety accompanied waiting for someone who might never show up. Even if I fought the most dangerous vampire hunter of the three, this man whom everyone was cautious of, and beat the next stage, it wasn’t a given that I could turn back into a human─and I wanted her to wait for me.

  “I’m looking forward with all my heart to chatting with you again.”

  “…Whoops.” Hanekawa took a step back at that moment for some reason. There was a playful look in
her eyes. “Bi-bi-beep, bi-bi-beep, bi-bi-beep.”

  “Huh? What’s that the sound of?”

  “My heart throbbing.”

  “What? Girls come with a sound effect for that?!”

  A sound like any old alarm clock, too!

  “Phew, I nearly developed something for you just now.”

  “What do we mean by ‘developed’ here, like a new drug or a beach resort?”

  I was rich, then. A tycoon.

  “So that’s the line you use to sweet-talk girls.”

  “Huh? No no no. I don’t even know what you mean, I barely even talk to girls.”

  “Listen to you, acting all tough and uninterested. Like you never bought those dirty magazines.”

  “Urk…”

  But I’m a guy. What’s a guy to do?

  “Sheesh,” she said.

  Then, after giving her body an exaggerated stretch, and putting on a determined look, she thrust both of her hands underneath the hem of her school uniform’s pleated skirt.

  I thought she was going to pull up her skirt again, but no, Hanekawa wouldn’t do something so illogical.

  Instead, she took off her panties.

  She lowered her peach-colored, lace-rimmed panties and carefully stepped out of them, the elastic parts staying clear of her soles.

  I think it goes without saying that I was dumbfounded.

  Prime-grade illogic.

  “Mm…kay.”

  It had been enough to make even Hanekawa blush. She shyly held out her balled panties.

  “Like just before the climactic fight in a superpowered school action series, if I may,” Hanekawa said, still looking bashful. “I’ll let you borrow these. Give them back when we meet next school year.”

  “…Hold on, hold on. Yes, there was a scene like that in the first manga you bought for me, but the item there was the heroine’s necklace.”

  “I don’t wear a necklace,” Hanekawa said, awkwardly holding down her skirt. “Araragi, you like panties, don’t you?”

  “………!”

  I won’t deny that!

  I’m not denying it, you know?!

  Denying it would call into question Koyomi Araragi’s very identity, so I’m not denying it, okay?!

  A Koyomi Araragi who can’t say no!

  But─but still!

  “U-Um.”

  “Well, if you don’t want them.”

  “No I did not say that. Wanting it or not isn’t the issue here, is it. Yup, yup. Er, what was that, so I give these back to you when we meet next school year?”

  Quite at a loss, and somewhat surprised at how compact panties were once removed, I accepted them.

  A soft warmth spread within my hands.

  “…Sorry. I can’t give these back.”

  “E-Excuse me?”

  “I mean, I’m never giving these back. I’m passing these down from generation to generation as the Araragi family heirloom.”

  “I certainly didn’t sign up for that!”

  “These panties have been parted from your flesh for eternity.”

  “How dare you!”

  “I won’t give them back, but mark my words,” I said, trying my best to strike a brave pose, “I will return this favor. If there’s ever a time you need me, and even if there’s nothing I can do, I promise, I’ll be there─as of today, it will be my life’s mission to repay you.”

  “Just give those back.”

  My very best effort to sound cool, and it didn’t work.

  Hmph.

  Words─so powerless.

  Hanekawa spoke next. “So, now I’m going to have to go home panty-less, in a skirt, with its low security rating… Compared to that, beating this Guillotine Cutter person can’t be that hard, right?”

  “Point taken.”

  No matter how grueling the battle─I would overcome, if I kept that in mind.

  I’d win handily.

  “Then good luck.”

  “Good luck to you, too.”

  Until next school year.

  The two of us smiled as we bumped fists.

  I looked forward to it─meeting Hanekawa in the new school year, once spring break was over.

  Hoping I’d be in the same class as her, I looked forward to it.

  Renewing my determination to become human again─but.

  About three hours after she went home, when the memories of our parting were still fresh in my mind and Kissshot had finally woken up, Oshino returned to the abandoned cram school─looking uncharacteristically distraught.

  “Sorry, I messed up,” he said in an equally dire voice.

  “Missy class president got kidnapped.”

  013

  Guillotine Cutter.

  The priestly man with the hedgehoggish hair.

  Narrow eyes that, on first glance, appeared gentle.

  A human.

  A human who denied the existence of aberrations.

  A human who eliminated the existence of aberrations.

  He carried no weapons.

  A vampire hunter by creed.

  According to Kissshot, he was the archbishop of a “new religion” as well as the Shadow Team Leader of the Black Squad Belonging to the Dark Number Four Group of Secret Special Operations.

  Episode, the half-vampire, described him as nasty, and even Kissshot warned me to be careful of the holy man.

  And─it was Guillotine Cutter who had stolen both of Kissshot’s arms from her.

  “Ah, have you run over? Why, you must be exhausted. Though if you are unable to turn your body to mist, you must be a novice with regards to such abilities,” Guillotine Cutter said. He spoke in a ridiculously polite tone─and with narrowed eyes.

  “……!”

  Speechless. I had no reply.

  We stood on the athletic field of Naoetsu Private High School. I found Guillotine Cutter waiting for me at the same place where I’d faced Dramaturgy at the end of last month and where I’d battled Episode the previous night.

  And he held Tsubasa Hanekawa’s body in one arm. His hand, which wielded no weapon─was clasped around Hanekawa’s neck.

  “A-Araragi…”

  Hanekawa was─okay for now. She hadn’t been hurt, and she was still conscious.

  Of course she was.

  She was there to be used against me─as a hostage. It would be meaningless if she wasn’t okay.

  For now.

  “I-I’m sorry, Araragi, I─”

  “Please don’t speak without permission,” Guillotine Cutter said, tightening his fingers around her neck─silencing her.

  Kufff, I could hear her breath escaping from inside her neck.

  “H-Hey!!”

  Provoking him could turn out poorly, but I couldn’t stay silent─so I’d yelled.

  “Yes?” he asked in an utterly gentle and meek voice. “Is something the matter, monster?”

  “Th-That’s a girl, you know!”

  “I abhor gender discrimination.”

  “But─she’s a normal person.”

  “Why yes, she is. Otherwise she wouldn’t be a hostage.”

  “D─” Our conversation had stopped making sense to me. “Don’t…be a jerk.”

  “A jerk? Like this, you mean?”

  With his fingers still digging into the base of her neck, Guillotine Cutter hoisted up Hanekawa’s body. It almost looked like she was being hanged.

  “Ugh… Uurgh!” Hanekawa moaned in pain.

  This drew a response from Guillotine Cutter.

  “You’re a noisy one, aren’t you?” he said, putting her back on the ground.

  Even then, Hanekawa couldn’t allow herself so much as a cough─if she did, even as a physiological response, there was no telling what Guillotine Cutter might do to her.