006
The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.
Punch line?
I mean, isn’t me getting sliced up and scattered across the ground in pieces already enough of a punch line?
“…Huh?”
I was alive.
I wasn’t dead─the sun was directly overhead.
Which meant that six or so hours had passed, and it was already the middle of the day─instead of being sliced to ribbons, I was splayed out on my back beneath the rays of the noonday sun.
What the hell.
What’s going on?
Ms. Gaen’s gone.
Without a trace.
What’s going on─didn’t Ms. Gaen chop me into bits with the Aberration Slayer? Or did my vampiric immortality restore me from the brink of death? No, that’s impossible, I didn’t give Shinobu any of my blood to drink.
Ms. Gaen had aimed for a time when Shinobu would be asleep so as to prevent even an outside chance of that happening─but even if it had, if my body was possessed of enough immortality to restore itself after being chopped into such tiny pieces, I couldn’t survive being out under the sun’s rays like that.
It was almost as if─there was an Aberration Savior to go along with the Aberration Slayer.
What’s happening here?
What the hell is happening─no.
What─did Ms. Gaen do?
“Ah, you awake?” A shadow fell over me as I lay there with my arms and legs splayed out, still totally confused. “Or did I wake up the sleeping child─Mister Rock-a-bye-baby?”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m some kind of lullaby, my name is─Araragi,” I spat out reflexively.
At the girl standing over me─a girl with pigtails and a giant backpack.
But the last bit caught in my throat.
Not that I’d forgotten my own name, of course─
“So it is. Sorry, slip of the tongue.”
She grinned as she said this─showing me that sunny smile I had liked, had loved, so much.
That longed-for smile.
I had thought I would never see again─
“And, is the punch line that you failed the entrance exam because you didn’t even make it to the test site, Mister Araragi?”
“Come on, it can’t end with such a lame joke.”
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