Grrrrrrr. …The next moment, a low sound reverberated across the corridor.
Kojou’s eyebrows rose without a word.
When Kojou realized what that low growl was, a somewhat awkward expression came over him. It was a grumble from Yukina’s stomach.
“Err… Himeragi, are you hungry, by any chance?” Kojou asked Yukina as she remained frozen stiff.
Yukina was silent. That was her answer.
“Haven’t you eaten since yesterday? Ah, because you didn’t have your wallet? Himeragi, you actually live alone, don’t you?”
“Wh-what of it?!”
Yukina tried to keep her voice calm, but of course it came out a bit flustered.
Somehow he’d felt like that was the case, but apparently Yukina had come to live here on Itogami Island apart from her family. Since she’d just transferred, she didn’t have any friends yet, and having dropped her wallet, she had no money. That had to be why she hadn’t had a bite to eat since the day before.
With a somewhat flustered look, Kojou tilted his head and gently presented the wallet in front of Yukina.
Even as Yukina became agitated, as if wondering, Wh-what are you doing? her guarded expression never faltered.
“So, uh, treat me to lunch. The guy who picked up your wallet has a right to ask that much, right?”
Kojou spoke with a voice drained of tension.
Yukina blinked over and over, looking at Kojou as if trying to weigh his true intentions.
Like a plaintive, hungry puppy, her stomach made a low growl once more.
7
Yukina Himeragi ordered a retro-version Classic Teriyaki Burger, onion rings, and grapefruit juice combo. They were a five-minute walk from Saikai Academy at a big burger chain franchise on Island South.
With refined etiquette, Yukina, sitting up straight in her seat, gripped her teriyaki burger with both hands, a happy look on her face. Kojou watched her absentmindedly.
“What are you looking at?” Yukina asked dubiously, noticing Kojou’s gaze.
“Ahh, er… I was thinking, so you eat hamburgers like normal people, too, Himeragi.”
“What do you mean?”
Yukina’s eyebrows flattened in a scowl.
Kojou sipped on an iced coffee that was heavy on the ice and thin on the coffee.
“Err, somehow I had the impression you hadn’t been to this kind of place, like you’d be asking where the knives and forks were, and stuff…”
“I am not entirely sure, but might you be making fun of me?” Yukina made a sigh, as if a little wounded. “Certainly, the town High God Forest is in is no city, but it does sell hamburgers at least.”
“…High God Forest? Is that the school you were at before?”
“Yes. On the surface, it’s a girls’ school for Shinto adherents.”
Yukina’s explanation was oddly roundabout. Kojou made an mm sound and lifted his face.
“On the surface—meaning there’s something behind it?”
“…It’s a training ground for the Lion King Agency. You know what the Lion King Agency is, right?”
“No, not a clue.”
As Yukina saw Kojou shake his head, she blinked.
“Why don’t you know of it?”
“You say it like of course I’d know about it, but…this is the first time I’ve heard the name.”
Kojou spoke with a conflicted expression. Yukina murmured, “Huh?” with a perplexed look.
“The Lion King Agency is a special agency established by the National Public Safety Commission.”
“Special agency? So you’re civil servants?”
A pretty extravagant name for a government institution, Kojou thought. He wondered if that name carried some kind of special meaning.
“Yes. The agency conducts information gathering and strategic sabotage to stop large-scale magical terrorism and catastrophes. As its roots go back to the Takiguchi Musha, the guards who protected the Inner Palace from evil spirits and apparitions during the Heian period, it is an organization older than the present government of Japan.”
“I don’t know about the roots thing, but…the gist is, it’s like a police force?”
Kojou could understand it in those terms.
If regular police forces had special squads for dealing with organized crime and terrorist organizations, it was no surprise that there was a government agency besides Counter-Demon Agents that dealt with magical terrorism and catastrophes. That’d explain why Natsuki referred to the Lion King Agency as “the competition.”
No doubt the vague-sounding “special agency” bit was because demons were its opponents. After all, a lot of people with counter-demonic abilities, like psychic mediums and sorcerers, didn’t like dealing directly with the government.
“So, Himeragi, since you came from their training ground, you’re part of the Lion King Agency, too?”
“Yes. Though as an apprentice,” added Yukina frankly after a humble nod.
Figures, thought Kojou as he nodded once more. She was still just a junior high schooler, after all.
Thanks to her explanation, he somehow understood the true nature of that spear Yukina carried. It had to be some kind of special antidemon weapon developed by the Lion King Agency.
“So why were you tailing me around, then, Himeragi? That special agency thing’s job is dealing with magical terrorism and catastrophes, right? What does that have to do with me?” Kojou asked in a blunt tone. Yukina’s eyes bulged a bit. “Huh?”
“Yesterday. You were tailing me, right?”
“Don’t tell me you noticed…?!”
“Wha? Er, did you think I wouldn’t notice that…?”
It was the fact she was surprised that surprised him. Yukina made a faint ugh sound.
“That being the case…er, Akatsuki…senpai…? Perhaps you really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
He felt like he wasn’t going to get used to Yukina calling him senpai.
“Senpai, your very existence is treated identically to war or terrorism.”
“Huh?”
“The Primogenitors who rule the Dominions each possess, by themselves, the might of a national army. The Fourth Primogenitor is treated the same way, of course. If you were to cause trouble within Japan’s national borders, Senpai, it would be seen not as a criminal act, but an act of war. I think that is why it is the Lion King Agency, and not the Police Administration’s Counter-Demon Section, that is acting,” Yukina explained to Kojou with a tone of concern.
“Treated the same as an army… What the heck…? Who the hell decided that…”
As might be expected, Kojou couldn’t hide his agitation. He was being treated on the same level as a war or a terrorist strike; or rather, his very existence was being treated as a national crisis. Even though he was suffering through his vampiric condition, now he wasn’t even being treated as a life-form, let alone a human being.
“So you really didn’t know, Senpai…”
Yukina made an exasperated sigh. The pitying look that came over her face rubbed Kojou’s nerves the wrong way somehow. To calm himself down, Kojou thrust some hard-fried potato into his own mouth.
“I dunno about the other Primogenitors, but I don’t remember bein’ treated like that. I haven’t done anything, and I don’t rule any kind of empire, anyway.”
“That’s true.”
Yukina quietly nodded. She shot Kojou a cold, antagonistic look.
“I was already planning to ask about that. Senpai, what do you intend to do in this place?”
“To do… Er, what?”
“Yesterday, I asked your little sister about you.”
“Yeah… I heard.”
Kojou unintentionally scowled at Yukina’s words. He remembered the fact that Nagisa had already spilled to her all the secrets of his past.
However, Yukina’s expression remained completely serious.
“You’re hiding the fact you’re a vampire from your little sister, a
ren’t you?”
“Well, I am, but…”
“Don’t you have some kind of objective, infiltrating the Demon Sanctuary, hiding your true nature from even your family? For instance, ruling Itogami Island from the shadows, adding the registered Demons to your own army and the like? Or perhaps you’ve come to commit slaughter for your own pleasure…you monster!” Yukina muttered in a tone that could be taken either as brooding or fantasizing.
Kojou groaned in a low voice, “Why does it have to be like this?”
“Now, just hold on a minute, here. Himeragi, aren’t you misunderstanding something?”
“Misunderstanding?”
“I’m not infiltrating anything; I lived in this city since before I became a vampire.”
“…Before you became a…vampire, you say?”
“Yeah. Check the records or anything you like. I’ve had this condition only since spring of this year.
“I moved to this island when I was in this junior high school so, that’s almost four years ago,” Kojou explained in an unpleasant tone.
That’s right. Kojou Akatsuki had not been born a vampire. Until a mere three months prior, he’d lived as a normal human being with no relation to demons whatsoever. However, during spring of that year, an incident Kojou had become wrapped up in changed his destiny. Kojou had encountered the one called the Fourth Primogenitor and had taken her powers as well as her life.
However, Yukina shook her head, as if to say, I can’t believe that.
“The Fourth Primogenitor was a human being? That cannot be so.”
“Huh? Uh, say that all you want, but it’s the truth.”
“Normal humans cannot change into vampires midway. Even if one is infected from drinking vampire blood, the person would be a mere ‘Blood Servant’—an imitation vampire.”
“Yeah. Seems that way.”
“So why make up an easily exposed lie like this?”
“It’s not like I’m lying to you, geez.”
Kojou made a tired sigh. He was bad at explaining things to overserious types like this.
Yukina adopted the tone of a private tutor addressing a slacker of a student.
“Now listen, Senpai. Primogenitors are the oldest and first vampires who received the curse of immortality from now-dead gods.”
“I am kind of aware of that, but…”
“The only way for a normal human to become a Primogenitor would be to become undead by using a secret curse from the lost gods on oneself. Are you saying you are capable of that, Senpai?”
“Uh, no. I don’t have any gods for BFFs, sorry.”
“So how did you become a vampire, then? There’s only one other way to become a Primogenitor, and that’s…”
Having said that much, Yukina suddenly cut off her words as if she’d realized something. The color of her face turned faintly pale. Aside from being cursed by the gods, there was but one other method by which a human being could become a Primogenitor. She’d just remembered what it was.
“Senpai… You don’t mean, you…consumed a Primogenitor and took his power into you…?! But that’s not…”
The softness that had been in Yukina’s expression a short time before had vanished. In its place, a look of fright came over her.
If you couldn’t become a Primogenitor yourself, there was but one way that existed to obtain a Primogenitor’s power. That was to consume the Primogenitor’s existence and to take the power, and the curse, into one’s own body.
However, there shouldn’t have been any way for someone inferior in magical power to take the quasi-godlike power wielded by a Primogenitor into oneself. Clumsily laying a hand on a Primogenitor would only result in one’s own existence being consumed and annihilated.
All the more so where an ordinary human was concerned: consuming a vampire simply wasn’t possible.
And yet, in point of fact, Kojou Akatsuki was saying he’d obtained the power of the Fourth Primogenitor.
“‘Consumed a Primogenitor’… Uh, please don’t put it like that. It makes me sound like a ravenous beast.”
Kojou sluggishly rested his chin on his hands as he sipped on his iced coffee. Yukina’s expression remained sharp and impregnable.
“Are you saying you obtained a Primogenitor’s power by some other method, then?”
“Sorry, but even I can’t explain the details. I just had that idiot push this troublesome condition onto me, and that’s it.”
“Pushed onto you…?”
Yukina blinked in what seemed like surprise.
“Senpai, you didn’t become a vampire of your own will?”
“Who the heck would want to be like this?”
Kojou spoke in an offhand tone. Yukina glared at Kojou with a dubious look.
“And who is this idiot?”
“The Fourth Primogenitor. The previous one.”
“The previous Fourth Primogenitor…?!”
Yukina sucked in her breath in shock.
“You’re talking about the real Kaleid Blood?! You’re saying you inherited those powers? Why did the Fourth Primogenitor choose you as his successor? How did you even encounter the Fourth Primogenitor in the first place?”
“Er, that’s…”
As Kojou tried to speak, his face suddenly grimaced, as if assaulted by a fierce headache.
The coffee cup he’d been drinking from fell over, spilling the melting ice and thin liquid that had been within.
Without noticing that at all, Kojou lowered his face onto the table, clutching his head. He let out what seemed to be anguished pants from having bitten his tongue. Like a curse, Kojou’s lost memories brought torment to his entire body.
“S-Senpai?”
Yukina spoke in a flustered voice at Kojou’s completely unexpected reaction.
“Sorry, Himeragi…”
But Kojou did not raise his face. He suppressed the fierce pain in his heart, as if impaled by an invisible stake, and simply panted painfully. The only thing that came into the back of his mind was a lone girl whose face he could no longer remember, smiling amid the flames.
“I’m gonna have to leave it at that.”
Kojou spoke in a frail tone. Yukina tilted her head a bit.
“Eh?”
“I don’t have any memory of it. When I try and force myself, this is what I get.”
“Is…that so? I understand… In that case, it cannot be helped.”
An expression that seemed relieved came over Yukina as she watched Kojou finally lift his face. It seemed she’d believed without any doubt what Kojou had said about having no memory. She must have had a fundamentally straitlaced personality.
Kojou was actually a bit disappointed in Yukina’s all-too-quick reaction.
“You believe me?”
“Yes. I believe I understand you at least well enough to know you are not lying, Senpai.”
Yukina spoke matter-of-factly. A conflicted expression came over Kojou. He wondered if that was a roundabout way of saying he was a simpleton.
Yukina got up and wiped up the coffee spilled on the table with a napkin.
After that, she came beside Kojou and leaned over him, pulling out a handkerchief.
“Turn toward me. I’ll wipe your pants clean.”
“Er, ah. That’s okay, I…”
“They’ll get stained. See?”
Yukina spoke as much as she reached toward Kojou’s pants. Kojou couldn’t breathe or move a muscle. Yukina didn’t seem to be aware of it, but if anyone they knew saw them, they’d get a really big misunderstanding from this posture, to the point that Kojou wanted to suspect that she was trying to trigger his vampiric impulses on purpose.
Yukina leaned over between Kojou’s legs, her pale, white neck defenseless before him.
“Senpai, I have been ordered by the Lion King Agency to watch you, but…also, to eliminate you if I determine you to be a dangerous being, Senpai.”
“E…eliminate?!”
Kojou’s whole body stiffened in an
entirely different sense at Yukina’s calmly delivered, matter-of-fact words.
However, Yukina spoke in a gentle tone. “I think I understand the reason why. You lack a certain self-awareness, Senpai. I sense great danger in you.”
“Er, I think you’re pretty dangerous yourself, Himeragi…”
As Kojou unwittingly added in a mumble, “Plus, you dropped your wallet,” Yukina glared at him.
“Anyway, as I shall be observing you from this day forward, do take care not to try anything strange. After all, I do not completely trust you yet, Senpai.”
“Watch… Huh.”
Well, fine, thought Kojou as his shoulders eased. Some parts made him uneasy, but Yukina didn’t seem to be a bad person. He didn’t foresee that being watched would have any serious drawbacks, and if he was going to have someone keeping tabs on him, he was a little glad it was a girl and not some stiff-necked male Attack Mage doing it.
“Oh, right, Himeragi. About Nagisa…”
Kojou suddenly shot Yukina a concerned look. With a bit of a mischievous smile, Yukina nodded.
Rare for her, it was a youthful, smiling face that matched her age.
“I understand. I shall keep the fact you are a vampire secret from her, Senpai. So please do the same for me.”
“Yeah. I just need to treat you as a normal transfer student, right?”
Kojou shrugged his shoulders as he replied. Either way, even if he told people a junior high schooler like her was a watcher from a secret organization, it wasn’t like anyone would believe him.
“Thank you very much.”
With those words, Yukina stood erect. She already had the usual serious look back on her face.
“Well then, Senpai, what do you plan to do after this?”
“Oh yeah… I kinda meant to go to the library and do my summer break homework, but…”
As he spoke, Kojou had an unpleasant premonition.
“Himeragi, you don’t mean to go with me, do you?”
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
“Er, it’s not a problem, but…is this, like, um, full-time?”
“Of course it is. It’s my duty to watch you.”
Right Arm of the Saint Page 6