by Nisioisin
“Huh? Which is it, good news or bad? Don’t be so vague.”
“It might be inconvenient for you right now, but it would’ve been convenient for you a little earlier.”
“Now I’m even more confused…”
“So, I went to the library yesterday and looked something up. When you beat Guillotine Cutter the night before last to finish collecting all of Kissshot’s parts…well, maybe you didn’t have her heart yet, but anyway, you were supposed to turn back into a human then, right? But─I felt a little anxious.”
“Anxious?”
“Would Miss Heartunderblade really turn you back into a human? I was anxious.”
It wasn’t that she doubted her, Hanekawa said, but…
“I was thinking about what would happen in the off-chance she didn’t turn you back into a human─so I did some research to see if there was any other way.”
In other words.
She’d looked up how a “formerly human” vampire made into a thrall by way of a vampire bite might turn back into a human being.
“…So, was there a way?”
Hanekawa nodded. “There was. But just one. It said that while servants are normally supposed to follow their master, if they actually caused the master harm, then the master-servant relationship would break down and they’d be stripped of their nature.”
“…? I don’t get it…”
“In other words, if you attack Miss Heartunderblade─you’ll be able to return to being human, regardless of how Miss Heartunderblade feels.”
“I see.”
First and foremost─I was surprised by such a simple rule.
“S-So that’s how it works.”
The master-servant relationship would break down.
It seemed to me that it had already broken down─but that would make it decisive.
I’d be able to return to being human. That’s what it meant.
“I found the same thing written in multiple books, so it seems like reliable information─I know it might be inconvenient for you now that you’re saying you don’t want to become human again and that you want to die, but I had to tell you. You’re the only one who can defeat Miss Heartunderblade, after all.”
“Yeah, that is inconvenient.”
Man. Always be prepared, huh? A cliché like “killing two birds with one stone” didn’t begin to describe how truly─
“How truly inconvenient this is─for me. It means that everything works out exactly as you want.”
“You might say I’m ‘fixing’ things. It’s a nasty trap, if I do say so myself.”
“You─know everything, don’t you?”
“Not everything. I just know what I know.”
So, Araragi, continued Hanekawa.
“You’ll just have to return to being human, yes? Given your current mindset, you can’t possibly let Miss Heartunderblade be.”
“I can’t possibly─”
“Or are you going to run away?” Hanekawa asked, delivering her final blow. “If you’re still going to say that you’re going to escape, then─I’m going to do everything I can to stop you.”
I’d rather…she spared me.
I’d still be responsible─my responsibility for bringing the situation about would remain, never to go away.
But.
What I could do─was settle it.
I could settle it.
And if I could, I needed to.
It was a far greater act of atonement than simply dying─mercifully dying─could ever be.
I looked at Hanekawa once more.
And I thought again─amazing.
My head had been full of thoughts of dying until moments ago. No matter how I rationalized it, all I could think of was how to punish myself. But a short little talk with Hanekawa, and before I knew it, I’d put those thoughts aside.
I couldn’t die until I’d spoken to Hanekawa─but now that I’d spoken to Hanekawa, I couldn’t die.
If I slew Kissshot and became human again─Hanekawa still wouldn’t let me die, no doubt. She’d use all of her powers of persuasion to keep me from doing it.
I’d made a bothersome friend.
And─I’d made a good friend.
“Then the question is whether or not I can beat her.”
I was the one vampire who approximated Kissshot─but our positions as master and servant seemed like a fatal distinction. If I wanted this act of rebellion to work, I’d have to do something out of the ordinary.
“That’s the thing. While I may have fixed things─there are a lot of gaps. If you were to lose, it would be the worst possible outcome, at least for me. Not only would you get your wish and die─Miss Heartunderblade would still be out there as an aberration… Miss Heartunderblade might even eat me. She did identify me as your rations, so she probably remembers my face at the very least.”
“Do you have any plans for dealing with the situation if that happens?”
“Huh? No, I haven’t thought it out that far,” Hanekawa said, shaking her head with a troubled expression. “What was she called again, a rare breed? Miss Heartunderblade doesn’t seem to fall under any traditional category of vampire. Just as you and Mister Oshino said, her immortality is so powerful that her weaknesses seem to stop being weaknesses.”
“Even if that’s basically true for me, too─the problem is the difference in our fight records…”
“And your mental preparation.”
“My mental preparation?”
“You spent all of spring break together with Miss Heartunderblade─so whether or not you can bring yourself to kill her is an issue here.”
“……”
She nursed me.
She sat by my side and cared for me.
She exposed her own body to the sun to save me as I was being fried by its rays.
And─she’d spared my life.
The life I’d tried to cast away and give to her.
She intentionally didn’t suck me dry. It was close to the kind of affection humans felt for their pets─
But still.
Despite the time we’d spent on top of the roof, for instance.
That time we spent laughing together, for instance.
“I’m mentally prepared,” I answered─even accounting for all that. “I’ll be able to slay her.”
“I see.”
Hanekawa nodded. There seemed to be something else on her mind, but it looked like she was leaving it unsaid.
“All right, then,” she said instead. “I’ll cooperate. I came up with this plan, so it’s my responsibility as well. Don’t hold back, let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“Don’t hold back, huh?”
“Ahaha, but I can’t think of anything more perverse than what I did the other day, m’kay?”
Perhaps to lighten the mood now that we were on the same page, Hanekawa laughed cheerfully─wait, hold on.
Please, she had me all wrong… Had she said that stuff at the outset to ease me into my decision?
Why was she offering to be cooperative in that kind of way?
If she wanted to help, she could help by coming up with some tactic. Honestly, what a silly thing to say to the gentleman known as Koyomi Araragi. Don’t hold back? Come on.
“Hanekawa.”
“Yes?” she replied.
As she tilted her head, I addressed her in an impeccably gentlemanly tone.
“Might you let me touch your breasts?”
“……”
Hanekawa’s expression froze in place on her still-tilted head. The fact that she was still able to keep smiling spoke volumes about her strength of character.
An oppressive mood began to fill the P.E. shed. Was this really the time to be making things awkward?
“Your breasts─”
“No, I heard you.”
Umm.
Hanekawa looked up, then down. Then she looked at me once again.
“Is that something you just have to do?”
“It’s something I have to do,” I said, trying to look as deadly serious as I could manage. “You haven’t seen Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade in her perfect form, have you.”
“Hm? No…but I’ve seen her at twelve and seventeen, so I think I can imagine what she looks like at twenty-seven.”
“It exceeds your imagination,” I said, holding up my index finger. “Her breasts exceed one’s imagination.”
“…Her breasts?”
“I fear that she might defeat me while I’m being distracted by those breasts. They will jiggle all over the place during battle. So to be ready for that, I want to train in the ‘way’ of girls’ breasts.”
“Ohhh,” I heard Hanekawa say. “That’s an even stupider reason than I expected…”
“B-But it does make sense, doesn’t it?”
“Mmf…”
Hanekawa shut her eyes and scowled, as if she was trying to withstand a pounding headache.
“I guess it’s fine.”
“Wha?! Really?!”
Why?
What about my argument actually convinced her?!
“Hold on a second,” she said.
Hanekawa began by untying her scarf. Then, taking off her uniform’s sweater, she untucked the hem of her blouse from her skirt. Just as I began to wonder what she was doing, she brought both of her hands behind her and stuck them underneath her blouse.
A few seconds passed.
And then.
Hanekawa pulled her now-undone bra out from under her blouse. She quickly folded it up with practiced motions before hiding it under the gym mat she sat on.
Then, she looked at me.
“Now, touch them,” she said.
“……!”
Hold on, I wasn’t asking her to go this far!
What was even going on here?!
I wasn’t prepared for this, emotionally!
Wh-What did she just undo?!
She didn’t have to undo anything!
“Wh-Whaaa?”
Plus, there was something else.
Upon taking off her sweater and undoing her bra, Hanekawa’s breasts seemed to grow bigger─was it some kind of optical illusion?
No. A vampire’s eyes couldn’t be deceived.
As Hanekawa was now, at least as far as I could observe from over her blouse, her breasts hardly paled in comparison to Kissshot’s and even rivaled them.
Not only that, they were so wonderfully shaped.
Now that she had taken off her bra, they should have been without support. But instead, they seemed to defy the laws of physics. Was Hanekawa ignoring the effects of gravity despite being a regular human?
Now this─this exceeded my imagination.
Of course, I’d made this request of Hanekawa precisely because I’d judged that she might be thus endowed. Even then, to call it “training” had been horribly rude.
Tsubasa Hanekawa.
Pound for pound, she could definitely stand up to Kissshot!
Who knew Hanekawa had such breasts!
B-But…
Hanekawa stood up and began walking in my direction (each step she took caused her chest to move in such an unimaginable way that my eyes were nailed to them, my body freezing in place like I was suffering a bout of sleep paralysis) before sitting down right in front of me─putting both arms to her sides, sitting up perfectly straight, and throwing out her chest.
This posture caused her breasts to look even larger.
Now this was drawing attention to your chest.
Not only that, her blouse was a fairly thin one, making clear what was just about the full, entire shape of her breasts.
“Araragi.”
“Huh? Er, yeah?”
“If you’re going to fondle them, do a proper job of it.”
“A-A proper job?”
“I think you ought to fondle them for at least sixty seconds.”
“S-Sixty seconds…”
Hold on, now.
She was setting the bar way too high.
Plus, somewhere along the line, “touching” had become “fondling.”
Oh no, I thought. I couldn’t say it was all a joke now…
What was I making my precious friend do?
“No holding back!”
“Y-Yeah!”
I reflexively held my hands up when I heard her words. But after that, I couldn’t move them any further.
After all, I did have a vampire’s grip, so I’d have to hold back when it came down to it. But I didn’t know how strong was strong enough. And to begin with, I didn’t know whether it was right to touch them from the top or from the bottom… There was the initial question of how to begin, but what came next? I didn’t even know what the follow-up question was.
They definitely wouldn’t fit in my hands…and so I hesitated to take a frontal approach.
I could just go from the side and bring them together─no, not that.
Agh, but there was a far more compelling issue.
“U-Um, Hanekawa?”
“Hm? What is it?”
“Would it be possible for you to turn around?” I said in a fleeting voice. “I don’t know if I can do this while I’m looking at your face.”
The shed was lit only by the flashlight, which may not have been enough for Hanekawa to get a good look at my face. But for a vampire, Hanekawa’s expression was as clear as day.
Her face was bright red, and she was biting her lip.
It was too much for me.
“……”
Hanekawa made a small, silent nod and spun around.
I could now see the base of her braid.
I had never looked at her hair that carefully before, but I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was… It seemed completely undamaged. I could see that she cared for it properly every day.
“Ack…”
I realized that it would still be difficult.
Now that Hanekawa had turned her back to me, my hands would have to make their way around her body. But in that case, her arms, stuck firmly to her sides, were kind of in the way…
“R-Raise both of your arms?”
“Are we doing stretches now?” Hanekawa asked as she raised them.
Now I had a clear path.
So then I passed my arms under hers─of course, this meant our bodies were now inches away from touching. Actually, now that Hanekawa was facing the other way, trying to touch her breasts would basically be the same as hugging her from behind…
Furthermore, this distance complicated things─should I be crossing my arms? No, it would be easier to feel where everything was if I did things normally.
I spread my fingers.
Hanekawa had barely moved an inch since sitting down─but even from behind, I could tell that she was nervous.
But of the two of us, I had to be the more nervous one.
I could feel my heart racing.
“Y-You’re not going to get mad at me later, are you?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“…Okay, well, just in the off-chance that this ends up going to court, could you say something for me like, ‘Araragi, please, I beg you. Fondle my braless boobies’?”
Snap!
I thought I’d heard such a sound.
Was it one of Hanekawa’s veins bursting?
Or maybe it was one of the tensed muscles in her face.
“A-Ah, Araragi, p-please! I-I b-beg you! Fondle my braless boobies.”
“I can’t have you saying it in such a quiet voice. It’s almost like I’m forcing you to say it against your will. You need to say it louder. I want it to come from you, so tell me what you want me to do to you, and where.”
“Araragi! P-Please, I beg you, fondle my braless boobies!”