by Nisioisin
Just as I thought that he had no intention of answering me seriously, he proved me wrong.
He continued─and answered my question. “You’re exactly right, Araragi. Those three must have decided to attack her together because they knew they stood no chance of defeating Heartunderblade individually, but even together, they still would have had no chance of defeating Heartunderblade. Only…”
“Only?”
“If Heartunderblade wasn’t at her full power at that moment─things would be different, yes?”
Not at her full power.
Those words began to summon something from within my memories. I didn’t even need to mess with my brain to remember─Kissshot had mentioned it herself.
She had felt under the weather─or something along those lines.
I had thought it was an excuse.
But what if it wasn’t?
“So when Heartunderblade faced those three─it was a fifty-fifty fight,” Oshino said.
“……”
“Well, I was planning on giving this to you whether you asked or not─but I’m glad, Araragi. Giving this to you after you’ve asked me makes things flow smoother. You can be pretty sharp sometimes, Araragi.”
Then, Oshino pulled something out of his Hawaiian shirt pocket and tossed it in my direction. I thought he was throwing his box of cigarettes at me, but that wasn’t it. At any rate, I couldn’t see how the pocket of Oshino’s Hawaiian shirt could fit something that big inside of it.
It was a chunk of bright red meat─it was a heart.
“Eek…!”
I cowered and nearly let it fall from my hands─but somehow managed to maintain enough composure not to. I maintained it but found myself frozen to the spot.
Yet while I stood there, frozen─
Badum badum, the heart continued to pound.
“The heart of Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade,” Oshino said. “She’d fought those vampire hunters one-on-three without it─so it’s understandable that she got her limbs torn off.”
“……!”
Of course it was understandable.
Even I understood that a vampire’s power owed to her blood. So without a heart, the most vital element in the delivery of that blood─it was more surprising that all she did was lose her limbs.
“…She hasn’t noticed, has she,” I said.
“Probably not. She thinks that all she’s missing is her limbs─and probably that it really was her not feeling her best that had nearly gotten her killed. She’s too confident─the thought that the rug had been pulled out from under her would never cross her mind.”
“Ah…so that’s how it was.” Huh. “I knew Guillotine Cutter was a crafty one, but stealing Kissshot’s heart from under her nose? So they piled on her afterwards? Well, taking Kissshot’s heart without her noticing must have been pretty hard work. Maybe I should be more impressed by that?”
“No, no, Araragi,” Oshino disagreed. Pretty smoothly. “It wasn’t Guillotine Cutter who took her heart.”
“Huh? What? So did Dramaturgy or Episode steal it and give it to Guillotine Cutter for safekeeping?”
“No, no, no, no. It wasn’t Dramaturgy or Episode, either.”
“Then who was it?”
The spine-chilling thought ran through my head that perhaps a fourth vampire hunter would make his appearance─but Oshino’s reply consisted of a single syllable.
“Me.”
“……”
For a moment, I was speechless.
A number of lines came to me, but I kept them all to myself, none of them seeming cut out for the occasion. Then, without any prompt, Oshino began explaining─and he sounded like the villain of some historical drama giving his soliloquy.
“Yes, I did really start out as a passerby─wandering the streets at night, I found an incredibly powerful vampire, one who was certainly no laughing matter. It wasn’t hard at all for me to guess that she was the aberration slayer, so I plucked out her heart─in order to balance things.”
Because he also guessed, he noted, that a number of vampire hunters would have come to this town as well.
“I plucked out her heart─quietly, so that she wouldn’t notice.”
“You’re…up to such a task?” I asked, recognizing how stupid the question was as soon as it left my mouth─why, the proof was right in front of me.
Moreover, Oshino had stopped a triple attack from Dramaturgy, Episode, and Guillotine Cutter in a jokey pose, looking like a one-legged scarecrow.
It was because he had such skills that he could─negotiate with those three.
“I am,” Oshino replied. “I’m not saying that it was easy or anything─and it wasn’t just hard work, it was absolutely backbreaking. It was especially hard to do it so that she wouldn’t notice. I brought a cross, some garlic, and holy water as my weapons and somehow managed to conceal myself. But even after all of that, I still didn’t know how it would shake out. The odds were no greater and no lesser than fifty-fifty─the dice just happened to fall in the favor of those three.”
“…And after Kissshot, all four of her limbs torn off, barely escaped with her life─she met me.”
“And held onto it thanks to your blood,” Oshino said. “And you became a vampire.”
“…I see. So─it’s not strange at all that I could defeat those three.”
Forget about it not being strange, it made more sense. The difference in raw ability was absolute.
“So was telling Kissshot about an abandoned cram school she could use as a hideout your idea of atoning for it? Even going so far as to put a barrier around the place while we were inside─”
“Atoning for it? I didn’t commit any sin. Again, it was a question of balance. Your participation changed the state of the game.”
“The state of the game?”
“I never expected the aberration slayer to make a human her thrall. That was far afield of my expectations. I’d thought the story had ended for me at the point when I removed her heart, but that reset everything.”
“Reset…”
Now that he mentioned it─those three had said something similar. That it was totally unexpected for Kissshot to create a thrall─
A notion, or something. She had some notion about not creating thralls.
“But while the situation may have been reset, Heartunderblade had now become too weak. One against three, or two against three even if we included you, her thrall, wasn’t lending itself to any equilibrium.”
“…So, happening to pass by Kissshot as she dragged me, happening to pass by as I was being attacked by those three, that was all on purpose? Your coming on stage didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason, so I was wondering─but that was how it was?”
Teaching Kissshot about this abandoned cram school, saving me from those three, all in order to achieve a balance─so that’s how it was.
“Oh no, that was just by chance,” Oshino said in a teasing tone. “It just means you two were lucky.”
“……”
While I thought there was no way that could be true, part of me also thought that maybe it was.
A phenomenon could only be observed after the fact.
“So─even if Kissshot gets all of her limbs back, she won’t be able to return to full power?”
Even if she got them back. Her right leg, her left leg, both of her arms. If she still lacked her heart─that was fatal.
“But of course,” Oshino agreed with a nod. “Which is why you were going to get her heart back from me next─because even with the aberration slayer’s arms, you’d have been the more powerful vampire. It was with the fourth fight─the one between me and you─that the balance was to be restored.”
“…I-I have to─fight you?”
“You were going to.”
“Going to?”
“Constantly being referred to as ‘a slob’ by you, I turn out, in fact, to be the ‘last boss’─but my careful foreshadowing went to waste.”
; “Where is the care in that?”
It didn’t pan out. Even if they had a number of letters in common.
Plus, I didn’t recall ever calling him a slob. Sleazy, maybe, but still not to his face.
I guess he knew he came across that way, without having to be told…
“I’m skipping that part.”
This time, Oshino lazily used his lips to move his cigarette, still in his mouth, downward to point at the heart in my hands.
“See, I’ve already given it back to you.”
“Wh-Whaa?”
“If you want to talk about atonement, now that’s atonement. I really am sorry about missy class president. I wasn’t joking when I said it’s rare for regular humans to get themselves this involved in a situation. Normally, humans run from aberrations. There’s something a little off about that girl. You can’t explain her actions through goodness alone─”
“……”
Tsubasa Hanekawa.
Not self-sacrifice─but self-satisfaction.
Even after she was nearly killed by Guillotine Cutter…
She was considerate.
After it was over, too, she didn’t have a single word of blame for me. In fact, she said something ridiculous like “Sorry for getting captured so easily, I should have kept my eyes open.”
“To be completely frank with you,” Oshino muttered, almost to himself, “I find that degree of kindness creepy.”
“…Seriously? That’s no way to put it.”
“I’m sure you feel the same way. Don’t you?” he asked, once again acting like he saw through me.
But yes, it was true. I’d said something similar to Hanekawa.
And despite the fact that I had─Hanekawa hadn’t changed a bit.
“…It’s like she’s forcing herself to be a good person. Of course, that doesn’t mean I can blame missy class president for what happened to her. In the end, it was my plan that saved her, but it was you who carried it out, Araragi, and I don’t believe yesterday night is enough to atone for it.” During the brief moments he spent saying these words, Oshino looked solemn─just like the day before. “What a blunder. That was so bad that you could hold every Oshino who lives in Japan accountable for it.”
“It was your mistake, don’t drag every Oshino living in Japan into it.”
“Ha hah. Anyway, consider that heart as reparations, Araragi. My way of showing you just how sincere I am.”
“Reparations…”
“It’s part of our trusting relationship. And with this, balance has been restored─though there are still a few kinks here and there.”
Saying so, Oshino stood from his seat.
“Her right leg. Her left leg. Her right arm. Her left arm. And her heart. Now you’ve recovered all of Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade’s lost parts. In other words, now you can go back to being human. Allow me to congratulate you once more. It’s okay for you to be happy, you know?”
“…Honestly, I feel conflicted,” I said. “It’s almost like it was all fixed.”
“You’re overthinking it. If someone fixed this whole situation, then I probably belong to the fixed side.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“Whether you do or don’t, that’s the reality. You overestimate me a bit in ways, Araragi. Even I have things that I can and cannot do. I may be the genius type, but I’m not actually a genius.”
“……”
What an annoyingly misleading type.
“I may have prepared situations, but I didn’t preordain them. Oh, and by the way. This is simply out of curiosity, Araragi, but haven’t you felt hungry lately?”
“Huh? No─I think I told you earlier, but I haven’t felt very hungry since becoming a vampire. I think it might be the immortality?”
“I see.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Hm? Oh, do mind.”
“So I should.”
“I think it’s time you started to feel hungry. It’s already been two weeks─ha hah. That was rough, eh… All right, Araragi. Be careful not to do anything rash again after you turn back into a human. Once a person has encountered an aberration, he gets dragged in more easily henceforth, so do be careful.”
With that, Oshino began heading to the exit, leaving behind me as well as his chair, which he didn’t even bother to return to the original position.
“Hey, what’s your deal? Don’t make it sound like you’re done with this place.”
“But I am done. My work here is over─it ended in failure, but what’s done is done, what’s over is over. Oh, Araragi. That’s right. About your two million yen and missy class president’s three million, five million yen in total. Consider it paid ’n done.”
“L-Lazy…bum?”
“No, that’s me. Paid. And. Done. Offset, canceled out. I’m making up for my mistake with Heartunderblade’s heart and─well, that might already be enough, but consider it a bonus.”
“……”
“No need to look at me like that, I don’t have any secret motives. I’m more generous than you might think when it comes to money. I’m not going to complain as long as we have balance. So send my regards to missy class president.”
“You’re going to go without ever meeting her?”
“Yep. I guess this is gonna end without us ever meeting─but there’s no need for us to go out of our way to meet each other.”
“Maybe so. But now that everything is over with those three, it’s not like there’s any danger of getting her mixed up in anything, is there?”
“Even so, it’d be awkward for us to meet at this point.”
Plus, Oshino added.
On top of that.
“That girl does creep me out,” he said, unambiguously─and harshly.
Oshino laughed a merry laugh as if to change the topic.
“Well, I still plan on wandering around this town for a while longer. Say hi if you see me. If you can’t stop yourself from feeling indebted to me because I called off your payment─well, why not look into tales of aberrations that have been handed down in this town, so you can teach me about them? That’s what my real specialty is supposed to be. I want to be done with all the hack and slash─it’s not my style, it really isn’t.”
Oshino kept walking at the same pace, opening the door with the broken knob, exiting out into the hallway, and closing the door again even as he said all that.
He didn’t say goodbye.
Now that I thought about it─I’d never seen him utter parting words to anyone. Even for the most innocuous of partings, all he ever did was chuckle and smirk.
“Is he serious?”
Feel indebted to him?
Was he serious?
Of course I didn’t feel indebted─whether or not he’d fixed everything, he was part of the reason we’d gotten into this fix.
Of course─he’d saved us too.
No. If I said that to him, I knew what he’d say in reply.
We just saved ourselves on our own.
“…So now I’ve got her right arm, her left arm, and her heart.”
Both of her arms from Guillotine Cutter.
Her heart from Mèmè Oshino.
All of the missing pieces had been collected.
At last, it was time for the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, the aberration slayer─to be fully restored.
015
“Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyi─ppee!”
That was the first cry to come from Kissshot in her perfect form.
After she woke up that night, I gave her the three parts I had received from Oshino─I had to think about it for a while, but I decided to tell her the whole truth about her heart. Kissshot simply replied with a happy-go-lucky “ah ha” before taking the kind of bite out of her own bright red heart that you would expect from someone eating an apple.
It’s only polite not to bot
her a lady with one’s presence while she’s eating. So I exited into the hallway.
And after a little while─I heard that shriek of joy. Filled with happiness, from the bottom of her heart.
I opened the door and went back inside the classroom. Standing there was Kissshot in her perfect form.