It was probably due to the difference in volume between her right leg, which
had been severed at the knee, and her left leg, which she'd lost whole. The
change Kissshot underwent after consuming her left leg was a dramatic one.
Her going from looking like a ten year old to a twelve year old had been a
surprise─yet, despite already knowing that her body would change, I think I
was even more surprised this time around.
Having recovered her left leg, Kissshot suddenly grew to the point
where she looked roughly the same age as me.
A seventeen year old.
She may have had me beat in height.
Of course, between twelve and seventeen, from puberty to adolescence,
is a period when appearances change the most amongst humans, too─but to
give a specific example of her growth, her breast size had become something
else.
If she puffed her chest out with pride as she'd been doing, it'd be almost
frightening now.
Her face also looked far more grown-up, and accordingly, the design of
her dress looked more chic. Her hair had grown even longer and was tied into
a ponytail.
Such stunning results.
True, whatever form she took, Kissshot was actually five hundred years
old.
"Mm."
She sounded pleased. Just like when she'd gotten her right leg back,
Kissshot didn't bother trying to hide her feelings of satisfaction or joy, which
made me, who worked as her "limbs," happy as well. She made it feel
worthwhile.
"My body feels quite a bit better─I dare say that my immortality has
nearly returned."
"Oh...so are you at a point where you might, you know, take care of the
next battle?"
"Unfortunately, I seem as yet unable to use my skills as a vampire. It has
become harder for me to die, but that is the extent of it. Perhaps I would be
able to fight Dramaturgy, but even Episode might prove too much for my
current state," Kissshot said, her tone cautious. "Let alone Guillotine Cutter."
"..."
She was saying the same thing─that was my reaction.
After that battle.
I began by having Hanekawa, now recovered from her wounds, go back
home. I thought it would be best to have her do so while Oshino kept an eye
on Episode.
In addition, Oshino didn't seem to want to meet Hanekawa (Even after
the first day, their timing was perfect in terms of not meeting each
other─since Hanekawa wasn't capable of avoiding Oshino, if anyone was
doing the avoiding, it had to be him), and she picked up on this and agreed to
go home.
Saying see you again tomorrow, she went home.
After that, Episode, who had woken up, and Oshino and I cleaned up the
athletic field we'd utterly trashed. With our bare hands we filled in the holes
where the giant cross had plunged into the ground, returned the sand pit to
normal, gathered Hanekawa's scattered chunks of flesh (which of course
would never evaporate, wait as we might) and took care of them. (It may
seem a little lurid, but we buried the collected bits in the flower bed and put
up a sign reading "Here lies Tweety." It was Mèmè Oshino, the expert, who
came up with the idea, but his using twigs to mark the grave with a cross
seemed to be going too far even as a morbid joke.) While I wouldn't say we
restored things to the way they were, we managed to get it to the point where
most people would be fooled.
Oshino and Episode then left me to go somewhere on their own.
"You got me," Episode said as he left. "Sheesh, gotta love it─I must be
losing my edge, too. Upset by a total amateur like you."
"..."
"Don't glare at me like that. I apologize about the chick. I got needlessly
excited. Plus─I might've been playing it off like it was nothing, but a battle
with a thrall of the aberration slayer is no cake walk for me. I couldn't afford
to let even a regular human pitch in─though I look real bad since I lost
anyway. But don't think you'll be able to defeat Guillotine Cutter with some
stupid little trick. I may be pretty crazy, but his crazy is on a completely
different level."
Then, as promised─well, between Hanekawa running in, Episode
attacking her for running in, and me trying to kill Episode, our fight got
pretty messed up, so I wouldn't say that it was exactly as promised, but─he
gave back Kissshot's left leg.
And so, just as he had done the other day, Oshino brought Kissshot's left
leg home with him, packed inside a Boston bag, in the early hours of April
5th.
Kissshot immediately took it and ate it.
She devoured it like a starved animal.
And assumed the form of a seventeen year old.
"So, Guillotine Cutter."
The priestly man with the hedgehoggish hair.
The only one who was unarmed.
"What's his deal? Both you and Episode seem to be super cautious when
it comes to him."
"I've already explained, have I not?"
"Your explanations tend to be too vague. There are so many things I'm
realizing after the fact. Can't you teach me properly? I'll listen properly, for
my part."
The sun was about to rise on the fifth of April.
We didn't have to worry about sunlight as long as we were in the
second-floor classroom, but I wanted Kissshot to tell me before she went to
sleep.
Actually, I was sleepy too.
Meanwhile, Oshino had left the Boston bag behind and set out again.
He'd gone for the final negotiation─for someone as sleazy as him, he was a
decently hard worker.
Well, I was paying him. He needed to earn it.
I really had no idea when he was sleeping, though...
"So ye say, but what practical use would there be in my explaining
everything from α to ζ?"
"I'm sure there'll be some... Also, if you're going to put it that way,
wasn't 'omega' supposed to be the last letter, rather than 'zeta'?"
Be that as it may.
"Guillotine Cutter... Am I right to think that he's 'human'?"
"Indeed. He is neither a vampire like Dramaturgy nor a half-vampire
like Episode, but a plain, pure and simple, human."
"He didn't seem all that plain to me."
And "pure"─I didn't know about that part, either. The word just didn't
seem to suit him.
"Mm. True," Kissshot said. "He's what ye'd call...a holy man."
"Hah. Don't tell me he's some kind of Christian spec ops."
"So close, yet so far."
Kissshot shook her head in reply to my offhand comment.
...I'd been fine before, what with her coming across as being only ten or
twelve years old, but now that she looked about the same age as me, I did feel
somewhat nervous speaking to her.
Kissshot looked beautiful and doll-like, like she was a foreign model or
something.
Or─like she was a medieval noble from a movie, though maybe it was
just the dress.
"How would I say it in the language of this country? Well, a literal
translation should suffice."
"A literal translation?"
"Guillotine Cutter is the archbishop of a new religion, one with little
history."
"A-Archbishop?"
So he was a big shot.
An archbishop at his young age? He was human, so he had to be roughly
as old as he looked, right?
"The religion has no name─I understand little of the organization
myself. But one thing is certain─the faith's dogma denies the existence of
aberrations."
"Huh..."
A new religion with little history.
Of course, Kissshot had lived for five hundred years. I couldn't rely on
her sense of time. For all I knew, she might call a religion formed before
World War II a new religion.
How many archbishops had come before him? He couldn't be the first,
could he?
"Within his church, Guillotine Cutter has tasked himself with
eradicating aberrations, which supposedly do not exist at all. In other words,
in addition to being the archbishop, Guillotine Cutter doubles as their captain
of 'special ops,' to use thy term."
"Ah ha."
"He is the Shadow Team Leader of the Black Squad Belonging to the
Dark Number Four Group of Secret Special Operations."
"Yeah, that sounds like a very literal translation."
Couldn't she come up with a smoother gloss on it? That was as rough as
you could get.
"But... Whatever else he may be, he's still a human, right? No matter
what methods he uses, won't he still be no match for a vampire?"
"Consider the situation. Neither a vampire, nor a half-vampire, but a
'human' has taken on vampire hunting as his specialty. If anything, it should
be cause for concern─and in fact, has he not taken both my arms from me?"
"That is true."
Dramaturgy, her right leg.
Episode, her left leg.
Guillotine Cutter, her right and left arms─twice as many parts as the
others, if you looked at it that way.
"Still, it was because I erred in not taking them seriously. I felt a tad
under the weather, too," Kissshot mouthed a lame excuse.
I decided against needling her about it, though.
"If work is what drives Dramaturgy to hunt vampires, and emotions
Episode, then 'tis duty that spurs Guillotine Cutter. As odd as it for me to say
this, faith is quite a handful."
Work. Emotions. Duty.
Sure, I could see how a sense of duty might be more of a handful than
emotions.
"So, what should I do?"
"Do as ye see fit. I leave it in thy hands."
"..."
Legendary vampire or not, it felt like she was taking the reigning
champion, no gimmicks style too far.
But saying no more, Kissshot lied down on top of the makeshift bed and
went straight to sleep.
Hrmm.
Not only did she appear to be my age, she was quite beautiful. Kissshot
exposing her sleeping figure to me so unguardedly put me in an awkward
spot.
It almost felt like an invitation.
Like it'd be rude if I didn't do anything.
But like I was being overly self-conscious.
An endless spiral of delusion.
"...Oh, whatever."
It was about that time (early morning), so I could just go to bed. I
understood all too well from my fight with Episode that planning ahead
didn't count for much in the end. Having a flimsy plan only plunged me into
confusion when it inevitably failed.
I had to fight with room to breathe, though that was asking for a lot.
Hanekawa was visiting again after sundown─and I needed to talk to her.
Until then, I might as well get plenty of sleep so that I'd be in top shape.
Even without any sleep, of course, my vampire body, "always maintaining its
healthiest condition," would be in top shape, but this was more about taking
care of myself mentally.
It was already April 5th. Before I'd even noticed, spring break was
drawing to an end.
Was I safely turning back into a human before the new school year?
Because loopy talk like "going on a journey of self-discovery" wouldn't do
then─I faded into sleep thinking such thoughts.
Vampires may normally sleep in caskets─but like Kissshot and Oshino,
I slept on a bed made of desks.
By the time I woke up, it was already evening.
I'd had no dreams.
Vampires didn't dream, apparently.
Come to think of it, when I did the math, I was sleeping about twelve
hours a day. But what could I do? Not much while the sun was out.
They say that nothing rears a child better than sleep.
Kissshot was still sleeping─not that sleep was rearing her, but waking
up beside a blond beauty was more unsettling to me than sharing a room with
a little girl.
As for Hanekawa─it seemed like she hadn't arrived yet. Nor had Oshino
come back. He knew that Hanekawa would be visiting, so he wouldn't be
around for a while if he really meant to avoid meeting her.
I wasn't trying to review the material or anything, but while I waited for
Hanekawa, I started rereading a superpowered school action manga that
Oshino had borrowed and returned after my first time through it.
Hanekawa arrived around when I was done with volume five. She said
she'd gotten lost on the way.
This always happened─as Oshino said earlier, it was an effect of the
barrier. What an annoying barrier─but on the flip side, it made for an ideal
hiding place for Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade to regain her
strength.
It must've been covered─by the fee.
Scratch that, Oshino had just gone ahead with it. For the sake of balance,
as he put it.
"Good morning, Araragi."
Putting her flashlight to the side, Hanekawa sat in a chair.
She was in her school uniform.
Both her blouse and her sweater had been ripped apart by Episode the
day before, so I was secretly hoping to be treated to my first sight of Tsubasa
Hanekawa in street clothes, but it seemed that my hopes had been betrayed.
"Traitor."
"Hunh? Wait, what? How? I haven't betrayed you, Araragi."
"Sorry, just talking to myself."
More like talking nonsense.
Well, she'd have a backup uniform, wouldn't she. I'd heard that the
girls' uniforms wore out more easily, too.
"Hanekawa, how's the wound on your stomach?"
"The wound─well, there's nothing left of the wound."
"Ah. Here, show me."
"What 'here'?"
I got scolded.
I was being pretty serious, though. Then again, we'd made extra sure the
night before, and if Hanekawa said she was fine, she probably was.
Healing with vampire blood.
I'd begun to worry afterwards that it might end up turning Hanekawa
into a vampire too, but when I checked with Oshino, an expert, he said there
was no risk.
It seemed that vampirism and immortality were two different
systems─or rather, they weren't really interrelated. One wasn't the byproduct
of the other, they were independent.
"For a moment there, I thought maybe being a vampire isn't all bad if I
can heal injured people─but then, if I hadn't turned into a vampire, you
wouldn't have been maimed like that."
"Yeah, I guess so."
Ahaha, laughed Hanekawa. She then looked toward Kissshot, dozing the
time away atop a line of desks, and said, "Oh. So it's true. Miss
Heartunderblade has gotten bigger. Wow, and she's become stunningly
beautiful. I can still see traces of how she looked before, but...she's almost a
different person."
"You'd agree, speaking as a woman?"
"Anyone would, just look at that. Her hair is in a ponytail... I guess she
keeps it like that even when she's asleep?"
She went, Hnmm.
There seemed to be something on her mind. Well, maybe women were
more sensitive when it came to women's appearances.
Hanekawa sat there for a while longer, seemingly in thought, before
facing me again and reaching inside her bag. "Here you go, Araragi. I bought
you a Coke," she said, holding out a drink that she'd probably bought from a
vending machine in the area.
I took it.
"Hey, thanks."
"And a Diet Coke for me, if you were wondering."
"Huh."
"If your body naturally puts on muscle, does that mean you can take as
many calories as you want without getting fat? That'd make any girl jealous."
"Nah, I wonder. If anything, it's that I don't feel hungry. Like I'd be fine
if I didn't eat."
Kissshot didn't eat much either. It seemed like we ate as a luxury, for
the taste of it, not because our stomachs were empty.
"Don't vampires feed on blood for their meals?"
"Oh yeah, that's right."
"Speaking of, Araragi. Do you ever get urges to suck blood or
anything?"
"Hm? Well, now that you mention it─no."
Despite being a vampire.
Oshino said Kissshot didn't seem to have the ability to suck blood right
now─was it the same for me?
I hadn't even thought about it.
"...Can you tell the difference in taste between Coke and Diet Coke,
Hanekawa?"
"Well, yeah."
"I can't, really."
"Huh. Okay, I just thought of something."
"Hm?"
"A new product is developed by a beverage company. They've managed
to create a diet cola that tastes the exact same as Coke."
"Nice."
"But the color is Blue Hawaii."
"Then it isn't Coke!"
I found it mildly funny and laughed. After laughing for a bit, I calmed
down.
A class president among class presidents.
A model student.
Excellent grades.
With phrases like that overshadowing her, my mental image of
Hanekawa was of a prim and proper stickler, a self-important class president,
but when I actually spoke to her, she wasn't like that at all.
She said interesting things and was always considerate.
Despite what she went through the day before, she had yet to blame me
in any way.
We'd seen each other every day since April began─if she hadn't done
that for me, I would most likely have lost heart.
My unease that maybe I wouldn't be able to turn back into a human. My
unease over having to fight it out with expert vampire hunters─feelings of
uncertainty assailed me when I let my guard down even for a moment.
I doubted that Kissshot, who basically considered herself the strongest
vampire, could understand such feelings─but Hanekawa helped me cope with
them.
It wasn't just the night before. Hanekawa had rescued me, saved me
many times over.
I thought I knew, but until the previous day's events I hadn't realized for
real what it meant, vacuously enough.
That's why─I had to talk to Hanekawa.
There was something I had to talk to her about.
"Hanekawa."
"Hmm?"
"You should stop coming here."
"...Hm!"
With a cheerful smile still on her face, Hanekawa stood up from her
chair and walked over to me.
"Well, I thought you might say that."
"Please, I don't want you to feel hurt─it's not like last time. Well, last
time was partly about not wanting to get you mixed up in it, of course, but...a
lot of it was my not being able to keep my emotions in check. I took it out on
you, and I regret it. But this time is different."
"...How's it different?"
"When Episode's cross took a chunk out of your side yesterday...I lost
myself. I could feel the blood rising to my head...I thought I'd die."
"You, not me?"
"Me."
My body was immortal─yet I thought I was going to die. Her wound
hurt as if it were my own.
"I talked to you about my intensity as a human, right?"
"..."
"Your getting wounded hurt like it was me who'd gotten wounded.
No─it hurt more. Hanekawa, I'm─" Since the night before I'd been thinking
of all the different ways to say it, but in the end I could only be direct. "I'm
not so desperate to become human again that I'd do it at your expense."
"...At my expense?" Hanekawa said, sounding a bit confused. "I don't
feel like you're treating me in such a way, Araragi."
"But don't you wonder what you're doing? Wasting your spring break
for my sake at an important time in your life─and nearly dying in the process.
Doesn't that make you wonder what you're doing?"
"Not...at all?"
Hanekawa shook her head from side to side as if being asked such a
thing was the bigger quandary.
"I've forgotten what happened then, but it was my own fault that I
nearly died, right? If anything, you were the one who saved me."
"I'm not able to see it that way."
I knew that Hanekawa was being honest when she said what she said. I
knew that she wasn't just trying to consider my feelings.
She wasn't being insincere.
She was sincerely a good person.
But─she was that strong, and therefore precarious.
"I just don't get it."
"..."
"I'm not confident that I'd be able to help you in the same situation. I'm
not confident that, if our positions were reversed, I would be able to go that
far. I'm not confident that I'd be able to show myself to a loose cannon like
him if I had a body that could die─but you did it like it was nothing."
I tried to choose my words─but to no avail.
I had no choice.
There was only one word that could express the way Hanekawa was.
"You scare me."
"...I'm scary?"
"Honestly, you creep me out," I said, my eyes downcast. "Please, I'm
not saying that to hurt you─I just can't understand why you're going this far
for me. I can't figure out how you'd be this devoted to a classmate you only
got to know the other day. It's like you're a saint or something."
A saint.
Or perhaps the Madonna.
"But your self-sacrifice is way too heavy a burden for me. I'm not big
enough to bear it. Healing or not isn't the issue─when I think of you being
wounded for my sake, I...just freeze. It scares me so much that I can't face
Guillotine Cutter like this."
"It's not self-sacrifice."
That was Hanekawa's reply─
And she sounded a little angry.
"It isn't self-sacrifice."
"Then what is it?"
"Self-satisfaction," she said quietly. "You're misunderstanding me,
Araragi. I'm not that good of a person, and I'm not that strong of a person.
I'm just doing whatever I feel like doing... I doubt there are many people out
there as self-absorbed as I am."
"..."
"If you came to know the real me, Araragi, I bet you'd feel
disillusioned."
Stop putting a girl on a pedestal, she laughed.
"I'm sneaky, and I think I'm tough. Enough to creep you out, actually."
"...How?"
"How? In every way, I guess? Even with you, Araragi, I'm only doing
this because I feel like it. There's absolute no reason for you to feel bad."
"Hanekawa..."
"But," Hanekawa said, clapping her hands in front of her chest, and
continuing with her hands still together, "if my presence is making things
harder for you, then that really is putting the cart before the horse. You
already have a pretty nice collection of superpowered school action manga,
so maybe I'm done being your shopper. Reading more might cause
everything to overflow. It does look like there's nothing left for me to do."
"No, there is something you can do."
I was staring at Hanekawa.
With my eyes still fixed on her, I said, "Wait for me."
"..."
"At that school, once the new year starts. Wait for me."
I realized I was asking for a lot. It wasn't like I had no idea how much
pain and anxiety accompanied waiting for someone who might never show
up. Even if I fought the most dangerous vampire hunter of the three, this man
whom everyone was cautious of, and beat the next stage, it wasn't a given
that I could turn back into a human─and I wanted her to wait for me.
"I'm looking forward with all my heart to chatting with you again."
"...Whoops." Hanekawa took a step back at that moment for some
reason. There was a playful look in her eyes. "Bi-bi-beep, bi-bi-beep, bi-bi-
beep."
"Huh? What's that the sound of?"
"My heart throbbing."
"What? Girls come with a sound effect for that?!"
A sound like any old alarm clock, too!
"Phew, I nearly developed something for you just now."
"What do we mean by 'developed' here, like a new drug or a beach
resort?"
I was rich, then. A tycoon.
"So that's the line you use to sweet-talk girls."
"Huh? No no no. I don't even know what you mean, I barely even talk
to girls."
"Listen to you, acting all tough and uninterested. Like you never bought
those dirty magazines."
"Urk..."
But I'm a guy. What's a guy to do?
"Sheesh," she said.
Then, after giving her body an exaggerated stretch, and putting on a
determined look, she thrust both of her hands underneath the hem of her
school uniform's pleated skirt.
I thought she was going to pull up her skirt again, but no, Hanekawa
wouldn't do something so illogical.
Instead, she took off her panties.
She lowered her peach-colored, lace-rimmed panties and carefully
stepped out of them, the elastic parts staying clear of her soles.
I think it goes without saying that I was dumbfounded.
Prime-grade illogic.
"Mm...kay."
It had been enough to make even Hanekawa blush. She shyly held out
her balled panties.
"Like just before the climactic fight in a superpowered school action
series, if I may," Hanekawa said, still looking bashful. "I'll let you borrow
these. Give them back when we meet next school year."
"...Hold on, hold on. Yes, there was a scene like that in the first manga
you bought for me, but the item there was the heroine's necklace."
"I don't wear a necklace," Hanekawa said, awkwardly holding down her
skirt. "Araragi, you like panties, don't you?"
"...!"
I won't deny that!
I'm not denying it, you know?!
Denying it would call into question Koyomi Araragi's very identity, so
I'm not denying it, okay?!
A Koyomi Araragi who can't say no!
But─but still!
"U-Um."
"Well, if you don't want them."
"No I did not say that. Wanting it or not isn't the issue here, is it. Yup,
yup. Er, what was that, so I give these back to you when we meet next school
year?"
Quite at a loss, and somewhat surprised at how compact panties were
once removed, I accepted them.
A soft warmth spread within my hands.
"...Sorry. I can't give these back."
"E-Excuse me?"
"I mean, I'm never giving these back. I'm passing these down from
generation to generation as the Araragi family heirloom."
"I certainly didn't sign up for that!"
"These panties have been parted from your flesh for eternity."
"How dare you!"
"I won't give them back, but mark my words," I said, trying my best to
strike a brave pose, "I will return this favor. If there's ever a time you need
me, and even if there's nothing I can do, I promise, I'll be there─as of today,
it will be my life's mission to repay you."
"Just give those back."
My very best effort to sound cool, and it didn't work.
Hmph.
Words─so powerless.
Hanekawa spoke next. "So, now I'm going to have to go home panty-
less, in a skirt, with its low security rating... Compared to that, beating this
Guillotine Cutter person can't be that hard, right?"
"Point taken."
No matter how grueling the battle─I would overcome, if I kept that in
mind.
I'd win handily.
"Then good luck."
"Good luck to you, too."
Until next school year.
The two of us smiled as we bumped fists.
I looked forward to it─meeting Hanekawa in the new school year, once
spring break was over.
Hoping I'd be in the same class as her, I looked forward to it.
Renewing my determination to become human again─but.
About three hours after she went home, when the memories of our
parting were still fresh in my mind and Kissshot had finally woken up,
Oshino returned to the abandoned cram school─looking uncharacteristically
distraught.
"Sorry, I messed up," he said in an equally dire voice.
"Missy class president got kidnapped."