“What did you do to Sakaki?” What could turn a human into something like that? Natsuki couldn’t even imagine.
“I didn’t do anything to him! He’s the one who pushed himself that hard,” Mutsuko responded.
“Why did you do this to Sakaki?” Natsuki stared at the video of Yuichi playing out on the wall. The degree of violence he was inflicting on a fellow human could easily be called “excessive.” For what reason had Mutsuko worked to train Yuichi to this level? That was what she didn’t understand.
“Does a boy need a reason to want to become strong?” The innocence in Mutsuko’s smile sent a chill down Natsuki’s spine.
Was it possible, she wondered, that maybe she really didn’t have any reason? That he’d just wanted to become the strongest man in the world?
Natsuki stared off into space as the thought drifted through her mind. Meanwhile, after checking something on her tablet, Mutsuko stood up.
“Takeuchi, I need to take care of something. Could you wait here?”
“Okay... but are you sure we shouldn’t do something about Sakaki?”
“I think Noro’s the one who’ll do something!” With that carefree line, Mutsuko left the restaurant behind.
✽✽✽✽✽
The heart was his weak spot.
Remembering that, Yuichi struck Kyoya in the back just behind his heart.
Sufficient concussion to the heart would cause ventricular fibrillation. Most people wouldn’t know just when you needed to strike to cause it, but Mutsuko’s teachings had made it possible for him.
Kyoya’s heart stopped. Then, it started again.
Stubborn.
It was clear, then, that a stake through the heart was the only reliable way. He pulled another white magnolia stake from his pocket. It was only the size of a pencil. Possibly not sturdy enough to pierce through to the heart.
But if he tried it and it didn’t work, he could dig in through his side and crush the heart in his hand. And if that didn’t work, he’d just rip him apart until he couldn’t regenerate anymore.
Yuichi wrapped his fingers around the stake. He was about to strike it into Kyoya’s heart with his fist, when...
“Sakaki!” The voice interrupted him.
“Sakaki, that’s enough! You’ve done enough!” Aiko’s voice was calling out to him, desperately.
From the corner of his eye, he could see the girl staggering to her feet.
Her uniform was in shreds. Her red eyes had returned to their normal color, and the wings on her back were gone.
She slowly walked up to him. “This is my problem! If anyone’s going to finish him, let it be me! So... enough! Please, stop it, Sakaki!” Aiko threw her arms around him, weeping.
“Noro...” Aiko’s touch brought Yuichi back to his senses. She was looking up at him with tears in her eyes.
“Love Interest.” The sight of her label going back to normal filled Yuichi’s heart with joy.
He laughed. “Wow. You are acting pretty much like a love interest right now...”
Aiko drew away, perhaps embarrassed over how she’d thrown her arms around Yuichi.
“Noro... Thank you. You saved me.”
In front of Yuichi lay Kyoya, his body covered in blood. He lacked the power to maintain his bestial form, so he was back in his human one. But even then, he was barely recognizable as human.
His arms and legs were bent at unusual angles. His bones were sticking out; there were gouges taken out of his flesh. His regeneration had slowed. It seemed the power couldn’t run forever.
“I-I’ll do it!” Aiko snatched the stake from Yuichi and brandished it over Kyoya.
“Don’t!” Yuichi shouted.
“But...” Aiko began.
“It’s okay now... I think.” Yuichi drew closer to Kyoya. “Right?”
“Eek!” Kyoya curled up, making a pathetic sound.
“Stop making trouble for your family, and give the world conquest stuff a rest,” Yuichi said. “Okay?”
Kyoya mustered up the last of his strength to nod hastily.
His spirit was completely broken. In Yuichi’s experience, once a person had been reduced to this, they never crossed him again.
“See? It’s okay,” Yuichi began to say. Then he realized the world was going dark around him.
As his knees buckled beneath him, he put a hand on the wall. Then from there, he slowly slid to the floor.
“Sakaki!” Aiko’s scream was the last thing Yuichi heard before he lost consciousness.
✽✽✽✽✽
Eriko watched the end of it from the roof of the old school building.
Vampires had the ability to share sensations with the people whose blood they drank. It was through this power that Eriko had perceived everything that happened to Kyoya.
“What on earth...” She put a filter over the sensation, so that while she could perceive the presence of pain, she didn’t have to feel it firsthand. But that alone was enough to make her quiver in fear.
Eriko had never been in a real fight, but it was easy for her to tell that Kyoya was up against some kind of monster. There was beauty in the precise, efficient way he dismantled his enemy.
This was not someone she wanted to have against her, she realized.
Eriko decided that it was time.
The result of her experiment was clear: Drinking too much blood had made it impossible for Kyoya to walk in the sun, and had begun making him more beast-like.
The beast forms... They were terribly ugly. Unpalatable to Eriko’s sense of aesthetics.
Kyoya’s body had continued to transform. Most recently, his fangs had remained extended, and he had grown hairier. In other words, if she drank too much blood, she would eventually turn out the same way.
What Eriko had been seeking was eternal beauty; the balance that would keep her from aging without turning her into a beast. But after seeing Aiko, she began to wonder if there was another way.
Aiko...
She had been so beautiful.
Could that have been the legendary form written about in Eriko’s notebook? She had thought it didn’t really exist, but after what she had seen, she had no choice but to believe.
“Perhaps that rumor was true...” she murmured.
Eriko had heard a rumor — which now seemed extremely plausible — that Aiko was not truly linked to the Noro household by blood. In other words, both Kyoya and Aiko were vampires, but of different species.
Could she, Eriko, undergo a similar transformation? If it were a question of bloodline, did she have any of that blood within her? She would have to experiment with Aiko next. What did it take to achieve that form? Aiko was a simple girl, she thought. It would be easy to string her along. And then...
“Good evening. Can we talk?”
Torn out of her thoughts by the new voice, Eriko turned.
There was a girl standing alone in the moonlight on the roof of the old school building.
Mutsuko Sakaki. The monster’s older sister.
“What are you doing here?” Eriko asked in her most elegant tone.
“I set up security cameras all over the school, ’cause you never know where an enemy might come from!” Mutsuko declared. “Of course, I never expected to see one fly down onto the roof...”
Eriko quietly looked around her. She couldn’t see anything that looked like a security camera.
“Well, they’re not so easy to spot. I can’t have people finding them, after all!”
“I see. So, what did you want to talk about?” Eriko asked.
“How much do you know? How much did you have to do with what happened?” Mutsuko demanded.
“You really think I’ll tell you?”
“Aw, you won’t? I was hoping you’d be the chatty type... I mean, the mastermind always comes around in the last act to spill the whole scheme and tell the heroes everything! Even stuff they didn’t ask for!”
“Oh? You think I’m a mastermind? Yet you willingly stepped into my
presence, thinking you’d be safe?” Eriko asked.
“Nah, I’m not too worried about that!”
Eriko narrowed her eyes cautiously. This was that monster’s sister she was dealing with, after all... There might indeed be more to her.
“Well, I guess it’s okay if you won’t tell me,” Mutsuko said. “But the real problem is the people you drank blood from. I don’t think we have to worry about Noro’s brother doing it anymore, but... How about it? Can we get you to lay off, too?”
“And why exactly should I do what you tell me?” Eriko asked.
“I figured you’d say something like that. I’ve got a pretty short fuse, so once negotiations break down, I go right to force.”
She was close. The distance between Eriko and Mutsuko had closed without her realizing it.
Eriko had never even seen her move. It wasn’t as if she had come rushing up to her. It just seemed as though the next thing she knew, Mutsuko was there in front of her.
“There!” With a grunt, Mutsuko swung both arms, as though to hug herself.
Shing! There was the sound of metal unsheathing as blades sprung forth from both of Mutsuko’s arms. They tore a cut across Eriko’s chest.
“Is this what they call an ‘a-ha experience’?” Mutsuko asked casually.
Eriko didn’t realize that the reason she hadn’t noticed Mutsuko’s approach was that she had only slid her feet along without letting her upper body sway at all.
Eriko jumped back.
The wound was extremely shallow, but very slow to regenerate.
The blades had ripped through Mutsuko’s sleeves at the elbow and extended all the way to her shoulders with a dull glint.
“I see. The silver coating was super effective, huh?” Mutsuko crossed her blade-coated arms, nodding as if in understanding.
Eriko decided she had to get out of there. This woman was too unpredictable to remain in the presence of.
She unfurled her bat wings — she usually tried not to use them in front of others, but she didn’t have many options now. “This is nonsense. I don’t have to hang around with you people.” She spread her wings and gave them a flap, which lifted her lightly into the air.
Mutsuko had no way of reaching her there, Eriko realized, and looked down at the girl in triumph.
“Saber off!” Mutsuko uncrossed her arms forcefully, launching the blades outward.
The blades spun through the air and caught a corner of Eriko’s wings.
Eriko didn’t lose balance and fall, but she also couldn’t make any more progress. She only barely managed to hold her position and remain in place.
“Aww! Well, prototypes usually have issues with precision...” Mutsuko pouted.
But Eriko felt sure that it wasn’t over yet. She couldn’t let her guard down; she had to get out of there as soon as possible.
Eriko flapped her wings again and resumed her ascent. She felt relieved as she seemed, this time, to be safe. But before she could leave the school behind, Mutsuko turned back around.
She looked Eriko straight in the eye, and stretched out her right arm. Her fingers took the shape of a gun.
“Bang!” Mutsuko said.
Eriko just assumed she was just being a sore loser... and an instant later, there was a hole in her stomach.
✽✽✽✽✽
“That one was pretty imprecise, too... Or was that your fault, Ibaraki?” Mutsuko asked.
“Hey, look... don’t blame this on me, okay? You told me the aiming was automatic.” Ibaraki’s voice could be heard over Mutsuko’s tablet.
Mutsuko had told Ibaraki that the body detection software would lock on to her heart automatically. All he had to do was pull the trigger when she told him to.
Mutsuko looked up at the sky. Eriko was falling.
“Okay, fire two! This time, aim for the heart!” Mutsuko cried.
“Can’t,” Ibaraki answered.
“Why not? Theoretically it should have three shots to a charge!”
“It shot out some of these big things... Condensers, I think? Like, really far.”
“Huh? Oh, come on!”
“Hey, don’t blame me... You’re the one who built it,” Ibaraki said.
Mutsuko had prepared an anti-vampire trump card: her very own hand-made railgun.
The only problem was, it was so big that it had to be hauled around like artillery. That was where Ibaraki’s brute strength came in handy.
First, they had broken down the railgun and had Natsuki’s servant Sakiyama drive it to a building near the school. Then Ibaraki had used his oni strength to carry the parts up to the roof. Since oni weren’t good with modern technology, Sakiyama had been the one to assemble it.
Either of them could handle the aiming, but since it could involve killing, they decided that Ibaraki should do it.
“By the way, couldn’t we have just used a sniper rifle instead of something like this?” Ibaraki asked.
“Huh? I thought you said you weren’t good with guns!” Mutsuko said. Everything on Mutsuko’s railgun, including the targeting, was automatic, so even Ibaraki could use it.
“So you knew from the start that I’d be the one firing it, huh?” Ibaraki asked.
“Well, it’s also illegal to carry rifles in Japan!” Mutsuko proclaimed. “Railguns aren’t covered by the Swords and Firearms Control Law!”
“Huh? No, hang on, back up... am I the only one who sees a fundamental problem with this?”
“Oh, never mind! If it can’t be used, it can’t be used, so just take it down, okay?” Mutsuko commanded.
“...What a slave driver... Now I know how Yuichi feels...” Ibaraki grumbled, but he cut off contact to do — she assumed — as he was told.
Eriko fell back to the roof. Vampire that she was, though, she could survive even a bullet to the gut and a fall like that.
“Well, what now? I’m not sure what I have on hand will be enough to finish you off...” Mutsuko was genuinely at a loss for what to do next. Fortunately, it was just then that the door to the roof opened.
“Why don’t you let me handle the rest?” A large man in a white coat stepped onto the roof.
“And who might you be?” Mutsuko asked.
“I’m Aiko Noro’s father, Kazuya Noro. I’m sorry for the trouble my relatives have been causing you...”
“Oh, gosh! You’ve done such a great job raising Noro, though! Okay, well, if you want to take care of the situation, I have no issue with leaving it to you.”
“I’m glad you feel that way.” Kazuya turned back and gave a signal. A number of men appeared and carried Eriko off.
“We’ll deal with Kyoya in the same way,” Kazuya said.
“Did Noro call you by chance, sir?” Mutsuko asked.
“Yes. Aiko called and told me about it.”
“I’m not sure if I should be asking this, but... if we had just let you handle it from the start... would it still have gotten resolved?” Mutsuko asked.
“No... embarrassing as it is to admit, our hands were tied by a certain agreement. We can’t do anything to stop a vampire that has unleashed its true nature. So what you’ve done has been a great help.”
“Oh, I’m glad to hear that. Oh, also! You guys run a hospital, right? Could you take Yu there? I think he’s in pretty bad shape right now.”
Not only had he transcended his limitations with the furukami, he’d further transcended those limitations to force himself to move again. The aftereffects he suffered would be worse than even the standard furukami’s.
“I’ll handle everything. They don’t call me a super doctor for nothing!” Kazuya declared.
And so, he took Yuichi into his care for treatment.
Epilogue 1: Let’s Finally Pick Where to Go For Our Summer Training Camp
Six days had passed.
After losing consciousness, Yuichi had been taken to Noro General Hospital and had spent most of the time after that asleep. Naturally, he was really badly off this time. He wouldn’t b
e able to move for a while, so he had been on an IV drip. By now, though, he was nearly recovered, and he was passing the time on the bed in the small room with little to do.
He was so bored, he thought, he might even welcome Ibaraki’s company.
Today, the school would be holding the closing ceremony for their first term.
The fact that they were still holding it suggested that no one had noticed what had happened at the school. Out of sheer boredom, Yuichi had spent most of his time reading the news on his phone. There was no mention of the recent incident, though there were some rumors about giant bats and wolf-people that seemed like they might be vaguely related. It was just the kind of thing people spread around the internet for fun, though, with no actual proof.
“Hello!” A cheerful voice greeted Yuichi from the door to his room.
It was Tomomi Hamasaki, “Fake.” She was wearing her glasses, with her hair down to her shoulders rather than in buns. She was in her school uniform, too — in other words, it was the Tomomi he saw in class every day. It suggested that she was dropping by on the way back from school.
Yuichi was surprised to see her. He didn’t think they were close enough for her to want to visit him in the hospital.
“Wow, that’s a real ‘what the heck are you doing here?!’ expression,” Tomomi commented.
“That’s not what I was thinking,” Yuichi said. “I just found it unusual. Is school over?”
“Yeah. I came here straight from the closing ceremony.” Tomomi sat down in a chair next to the bed. “I’m here to see you less as a classmate and more as a regular. You know, keep you quiet, and stuff.”
“I won’t tell anyone, and I won’t ask any more about your situation, so don’t worry,” Yuichi said earnestly. He genuinely didn’t want to know, anyway, and prying into her story might get him mixed up in another complicated mess.
The Half-Baked Vampire vs. The Strongest Little Sister?! Page 15