by Nisioisin
But that would be after I talked to Hanekawa.
As always, Hanekawa was wearing her school uniform. I wondered if showing me what she looked like in her street clothes just wasn’t on her to-do list… Or maybe she really didn’t want me to see her like that… Well, not that I care, mind you.
Hanekawa grinned with the same smile as always.
Was this her being considerate, too?
“I dunno about this…” On top of that, she began to speak to me from behind in an unusually high-strung voice as I barricaded the door once more. “I’ve gotten myself locked into a P.E. shed. What am I going to do if you tried something naughty?”
“…Naughty?”
Wait… How much of a pervert did she take me for? I admit, I may have shown her that side of me more than once, but I wasn’t the type who actually enjoyed that kind of talk.
If anything, I was a gentleman.
“Flashlight, on!”
She turned on her light and put it on top of a gymnastics vault. It was rectangular in shape, which kept it from rolling off. Then, Hanekawa sat down on top of a gym mat, while I sat directly in front of her.
“Oh my. There you go sitting right in front of me to sneak a look at my panties.”
“You’re getting who I am as a man all wrong,” I finally said, unable to take it any longer, while Hanekawa pulled on the hem of her skirt. “If a naked girl was in front of me, I’m the kind of guy who wouldn’t look at her if she said not to!”
“That’s normal.”
“Ulp!”
Seriously?
Since when had that become standard?
“No, Hanekawa, I don’t think you understand just how gentlemanic I am at heart.”
“Gentlemanly,” Hanekawa corrected. “But if that’s true, I can’t wait.”
“Can’t wait for what?”
“Won’t I be treated to oodles of your gentle behavior once the new school year starts?”
“……”
Wait a sec. How could she be so perceptive?
I didn’t so much as hint at it in my email─my plan was to hide it until the very end.
Because I knew that Hanekawa would try to stop me.
“So you can’t die on me.”
“…Hanekawa.”
“You can’t die,” she said.
She looked at me head-on in the dark.
“Those thoughts of yours are proof your heart is trying to run away from everything.”
“…You’re incredible.”
After taking time to digest her words, I replied with my unfiltered thoughts.
“You’re incredible. Seeing you─I feel so terribly lame. I probably would’ve died a lot sooner if I hadn’t met you. There were more than enough situations where I could have.”
“You’re not listening, I just said you can’t die─do you hear what I’m saying?”
“This is all my own doing,” I said. It almost felt like I was confessing. “We’re in this situation all because of how thoughtless I am─I hadn’t even considered that things could end up like this when I gave blood to Kissshot that day, you know? It would’ve taken nothing more than a moment of thought to realize what it meant to give my blood to a vampire, but I went and…”
It hadn’t even crossed my mind─that she ate people, that people would die because of her. I’d run away from those thoughts. Even after I’d given my blood to her, no matter how preoccupied I was about having become a vampire─I still had more than enough time to think about it.
No.
I’d said it myself at the very beginning.
To Hanekawa, on the day of closing ceremonies.
I was the one who’d spoken the words.
She’ll suck your blood─and kill you.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Guillotine Cutter had his blood sucked.
And then he was killed.
He died.
I should have known─but didn’t.
“Someone died because of me.”
“It’s not your fault, Araragi. Plus, for a vampire…for Miss Heartunderblade, it’s probably a very natural thing to do. It’s the same as when we eat cows or pigs─right?”
“……”
She’d die if she didn’t eat.
That’s what she told me.
“But─she even thought of you as my rations. You never counted to her─she never saw you as among our numbers.”
“But you were an exception for her, right?”
Saviors.
Each of us had saved the other’s life.
I saved Kissshot─
And Kissshot saved me.
Maybe ours was a relationship based on trust in that case. But still.
“She was just being good to me the way you or I might be to a smart cow… Well, maybe not a cow, but you know what I mean. Like one of those genius dogs, or a genius monkey.”
“You mean a pet?” suggested Hanekawa.
She was right.
And Oshino had said something like that too.
The kind of affection humans feel for their pets…
“But it must all be natural for her─including how she sees me.”
“Yeah. Which is why Kissshot isn’t to blame. It’s all my fault. I was in the wrong here─no one else.”
“I don’t think you were in the wrong, Araragi. All it takes is a shift in perspective for what’s right and what’s wrong to be flipped all the way around.”
“I agree.”
Oshino─had touched on that too.
We all define justice in our own ways.
That was why Oshino did what he did. He chose the middle ground─and stuck firmly to it.
“It seemed impossible to me at the time. Dramaturgy, Episode, Guillotine Cutter─those three were the human side of justice.”
“That’s because you were being a vampire then, Araragi. You couldn’t help it…but I guess it’s not that easy to rationalize.”
“Easy or hard, I can’t. I’ve become an enemy to humanity.”
“And that’s why you’re giving up on becoming human again?” Hanekawa’s tone wasn’t accusatory, but the question weighed heavily on me. “Have you given up on being human, Araragi? I thought you wanted to go back to being one─you said you wanted to return to reality.”
“But we ended up with a dead body. For me to have my wish granted at this point is just too selfish.”
“Speaking of selfish, isn’t that what you’re being now, Araragi?”
“Huh?”
Hanekawa touched her glasses as if to make sure they were in place and took a brief pause─before saying, “You’re trying to leave the big mess you made and run away from it all.”
“No…” That’s not it, I tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come out.
Hanekawa kept going.
“You’re running away emotionally, and you’re running away physically.”
“……”
“You’re trying to run away from here. Trying to reset everything all because you failed. Life doesn’t have a reset button─so you’re trying to pull the plug instead. No?”
“…No.”
No. I didn’t think so.
“It’s not that I want to run away, I want to take responsibility. The only way I can atone for it is to end my immortal life with my own hands.”
“That’s not atonement. You’d just be piling sin on top of sin,” Hanekawa said. “Suicide is a sin, you know.”
“What, Hanekawa… Are you one of those anti-suicide people?”
“I don’t have a firm stance on the matter either way, but we probably have the same opinion on that kind of thing.”
“The same opinion?”
“It feels awful when people die.” After letting that sink in, Hanekawa continued, “I don’t mind if I die─but it feels awful when people die.”
“……”
“No matter who that person is.”
“…You’re talking about Guillotine Cutter?”
I began to think about him, though we’d only met a couple of times. “Some people ought to die─but people dying can’t ever not matter. That’s how I see it, and that’s how I define it. And from that perspective, I’m a person who ought to die.”
“But you’re not a person at the moment, are you?”
“Now you’re just nitpicking.”
“I’ll pick as many nits as I need to, if it’s for a friend.”
“Hanekawa.”
I realized there was no need to say what I wanted to say, and that even if I did say it, she’d have some retort, but─I still said it.
“True, I’m not human at the moment. I’m a vampire. And that means─just like Kissshot, I eat people.”
“……”
“I tried imagining it just now, but…just the thought makes me sick. I don’t want to live so badly that I’m willing to eat people.”
Which, I explained, is why I needed to die.
If I wasn’t turning back into a human, my only choice was death.
“Unlike you, I’m a weak person. If I don’t die now, I’m sure I’ll gradually slip─and some day, I won’t be able to resist my hunger.”
Rations.
Kissshot’s word.
“Hanekawa. Eventually, even I’m going to end up seeing you as nothing more than food.”
And that was what scared me.
Guillotine Cutter’s corpse was scary─but so was Kissshot’s comment about Hanekawa.
Her understanding of Hanekawa.
Her common sense would some day become my common sense, too.
Some day, the common sense I’d acquired as a human would leave me, and it would be replaced by a vampire’s common sense.
And when that happened, it seemed likely that I’d see Hanekawa merely as food.
I’d want to eat her.
“Then eat me.”
As if she had no desire to shoot me down, Hanekawa didn’t attempt a retort of the kind I’d expected─instead, in a composed tone, she said that.
“I think it’d be fine if you ate me.”
“…What? What are you even saying?”
It was an honest question. I didn’t know.
Not what her words meant, but how she felt.
“I wouldn’t call someone a friend if I wasn’t ready to die for them.”
“…Er.”
I knew people had their own definitions for everything, but this one went a little too far.
Who could keep up with such a definition of friendship?
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Hanekawa said with a smile. “I told you, if you got to know the real me, you’d feel disillusioned.”
“…Who exactly are you?”
“Hmm? Your friend, Araragi. At least, I’d like to think so.”
“Would a plain old friend go so far for someone like me? How are you able to do so much for my sake? What, are you the reincarnation of a cat I saved when I was in elementary school? Some inseparable childhood friend who moved away years ago? Are you a war buddy from my previous life?”
“Nope, not at all.”
“Didn’t think so.”
If you were wondering, I never saved a cat as a kid.
I didn’t have any friends who moved away, either.
My previous life I wasn’t so clear on, though.
“Like I said before─how are you able to do all this for me, someone you just met? If you went this far for everyone you knew, you could have all the lives you wanted and it still wouldn’t be enough.”
“Well, I don’t go this far for everyone I know,” Hanekawa said. “I’m doing this because it’s for you, okay?”
“I hope you know that however much you do for me, I’m still a minor. I can’t co-sign for you on anything, all right?”
“That certainly wasn’t my plan all along.”
“And I’ll probably be unemployed even as an adult, so I still wouldn’t be able to co-sign on anything for you.”
“Well, about that, I do hope you end up with a job.”
“Don’t actually be worrying that I might not!”
“Fine, then you worry.”
But at any rate, Hanekawa said.
“One life is all I need to save you, Araragi.”
“…So you’re saying that you dying doesn’t matter?”
“I don’t want to die, but you already saved my life twice─so I wouldn’t complain if you ate me, Araragi.”
Though she’d probably say that it hurt or something, Hanekawa said casually.
She hadn’t shot me down─but I didn’t have a reply for her.
She was amazing─she really was.
Honestly, she was so amazing that it didn’t make sense.
“So you can’t die,” Hanekawa repeated. “Don’t die.”
“…Then who’s going to take responsibility?” I couldn’t help but ask. “I was the one who revived Kissshot when she was on the brink of death─and I collected all of her limbs, then gave her back her heart, which she hadn’t even asked for. Who’s going to be responsible for that? Even if dying is a means of escape, how am I supposed to take responsibility without dying?”
“So you’ll be able to take responsibility if you do?”
“I don’t know, but…”
It was already all over. There was nothing that could be done─the situation was set. No one could stop Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade now that she had her full powers. It was my fault that she’d recovered─and I knew she was going to keep eating humans without so much as a second thought.
Just as she had done until now.
But from today on, it would be my fault.
“Guillotine Cutter couldn’t do it─in the time it took me to go shopping at the convenience store, she tore him to pieces and ate him as a snack. Dramaturgy and Episode have gone back home, but there’s no way they’d be any match for her. If I had to come up with someone, it’d be Oshino─but he would never do anything beyond striking a balance. He’s drawn a firm line─this business with Kiss- shot is over and done with in his mind. He’s not going to go and steal her heart on a whim again. No one can stop that vampire now.”
“Even you, Araragi?” Hanekawa said, cutting to the heart of the matter. “Wouldn’t you be able to stop her, Araragi? In fact─aren’t you the only one who can stop her now?”
Her words struck me almost entirely by surprise.
And─that’s what I had been overlooking.
“Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade…the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire, right? And you, Araragi, her one thrall─aren’t you actually the only one who can stop her?”
“…Oh.”
What I’d overlooked.
What I’d forgotten to do.
Absolutely. How had I missed something so simple? If neither Dramaturgy nor Episode nor Guillotine Cutter nor Oshino could do it─
Then I, who collected from them her right leg, her left leg, both of her arms, and her heart─I, Koyomi Araragi, had to do it.
I could just be the one to do it.
That─was taking responsibility.
Whether or not I could pull it off didn’t matter.
Right, I may have made a big mess of things.
But─I hadn’t done anything yet!
“I’m going to be the one to slay Kissshot,” I said aloud.
As I did, it began to feel real.
This was it.
It was something that only I could do.
The aberration slayer─I would stop her!
If that’s what I needed to do─then I had no choice but to!
Click.
It felt as if the gears had met and finally started to turn in my head.
“Your expression changed. Want to hear some good news on top of that, Araragi? Well, maybe it’s bad news,” Tsubasa Hanekawa lost no time to add.