Monogatari Series - Volume 18 - Chapter 1.24

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Episode.

One of three vampire hunters who’d traveled to Japan during spring break to chase after the legendary vampire Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade and kill her.

A half-vampire youth with the characteristics of both a vampire and a human.

Opposed to both vampires and humans─he hated vampires and resented humans.

Neither vampire nor human, and moved not by duty or work.

A professional who had his private reasons.

This bellicose expert vampire slayer with his offensive fighting style had once battled me too, back when I became the thrall of the legendary vampire─or maybe you should just say he made a fool of me, but in the end, thanks both to Mèmè Oshino’s wits and Tsubasa Hanekawa’s tact, he returned to his motherland empty-handed, or at least he should have…so why was he here?

To save me?

Is that why he threw that cross?

At the plastic bottle containing─holy water?

“It appears as though an obstacle has presented itself, Sir Araragi,” the boy Aberration Slayer said as he backed up─with only walls behind him and Episode standing at the entrance, we were in something like a dead end. “This issue would have been settled quickly had ye quaffed thy chalice more holy than poisoned─nor would I have ignored that sign and seal had ye purified thyself of your own volition.”

I didn’t understand what he was saying at first…but it seemed there was some sort of trick to the tea he’d handed me. So he lied about buying it at a vending machine?

Had I tasted its contents, unable to stand any more of our weighty conversation─something inconvenient would’ve happened to my body, though I wasn’t sure exactly what.

Something the boy Aberration Slayer would find convenient─my parting ways with Shinobu, for example?

Had the boy been plotting to assassinate me, hiding every bit of his hostility?

The animosity this implied chilled my spine.

So the whole time we spoke─he was waiting with greedy eyes for me to fall into his trap? He was eagerly waiting for me to drink holy water?

No─maybe it was ardor, not animosity.

That─was the kind of fervor he held for Shinobu.

As I worried and shilly-shallied, he moved with purpose to accomplish his goal…

“Keheheheh─gotta love it. Don’t be mad, thrall of Heartunderblade─anything goes when it comes to slaying aberrations. Sneak attacks, surprise attacks, they’re all acceptable moves,” Episode, the individual apparently responsible for saving me from this pinch, said─but no, I shouldn’t use a word as uncertain as apparently. It was clear that he had saved me.

If he hadn’t hurtled the massive object, itself purified─an oversized cross many times bigger than its wielder.

Surely I would have ingested that liquid, just as the boy Aberration Slayer wished─but I couldn’t immediately accept the reality that I’d been saved by Episode. After all, he’d been such a pain to both me and Shinobu over spring break─wasn’t his cross a weapon meant to kill, not save me?

The cross sticking out of the ground instilled far greater fear in me than any plastic bottle─ despite having been told of its dangerous contents.

The cross’s owner, too…

Anyone could see that I’d been rescued here, but I only felt like a new enemy had appeared.

Why was he here?

I couldn’t stop myself from wondering.

My doubts may have been shared.

“Art thou a modern expert? So then, have ye come here to slay me?” the boy Aberration Slayer asked coolly.

“Hard to say. You seem more like an expert than a vampire to me right now, but I wonder if that’s going to change once it’s night,” Episode replied. “In that case, I could always just kill you to the point that there’s not even any fallout left.”

Episode sounded far more heated talking to the boy Aberration Slayer, but his glare seemed to be pointed my way as well.

Of course.

From his point of view, the boy Aberration Slayer and I were birds of a feather.

“Allow me to clarify. I had no intent of a sneak or surprise attack─this too was an act of harassment delivered in place of a proper greeting. Anyone with the slightest amount of expert knowledge should have been able to notice it was holy water. How surprised I was to learn that an amateur ignorant to that degree stood close to Kissshot.”

“Yeah, well, you look pretty amateurish to me yourself, trying to slay an aberration with a four-hundred-year-old move as pious as that─gotta love it.”

“…”

I couldn’t grasp what was going on here. Forget words, I was at a loss for letters. But then, as if to follow up─

“Well, good. Looks like I managed to make it in time. Nice to meet ya, little buddy First,” the voice said, so cheerful it seemed out of place as it interrupted the three-way stalemate between me, Episode, and the boy Aberration Slayer─it belonged to Miss Gaen.

Fiddling with her cell phone, she made her appearance from behind Episode with light steps─I never thought I’d feel relieved to see her, of all people, but now it finally made sense.

Ah─so the “helper” Miss Gaen left the mountain to go and meet was Episode, the vampire hunter.

He did fight vampires, now that I thought about it.

Calling over an expert in vampire slaying was almost too by-the-book a move─and Episode?

He must’ve been the only one available…and hold on, did that mean she gave Miss Kagenui an even wider berth than him?

“You took forever, Miss Gaen,” Episode said.

“Real sorry about that,” she amiably apologized. “But you know, ’Sode, you’re to blame here too. I wish you wouldn’t put it all on me. You spent so much time having fun hitting on girls that you were almost late.”

“Again, I wasn’t hitting on anyone… Just how old do you think I am?”

This back-and-forth made it seem as though they’d met before. Well, if Miss Gaen was the big boss they said she was, maybe it wasn’t so strange that she had international connections…

Unsurprised by the boy Aberration Slayer’s appearance, Miss Gaen turned to him. “I am Izuko Gaen. I’m the lady who knows everything,” she gave her full and proper name─or maybe not. There was no guarantee it was her real name, when I thought about it. “I’m here to negotiate with you,” she said.

“I must admit, I am at a disadvantage.”

’Tis still daytime, the boy Aberration Slayer laughed.

Not a comfortable laugh, but it did hint at his enthusiasm for the situation─perhaps it was far more of a real challenge than the one he was in until moments ago, when he faced off against a foolish, cowardly high school student.

“Sir Araragi. It appears as though our discussion ends here─so I ask for thy forgiveness. We could not discover a middle ground. As such, our relationship must move to the next stage.”

“You call that a discussion?”

He had some nerve, after trying to trick me.

But wait, the next stage? What did that mean…

“What else? A duel,” he said. Like it was part of a procedure. “Two men battling over a woman─a tradition that has stayed unchanged for four hundred years.”

“…”

“Let us have a bloodbath this night,” the boy Aberration Slayer declared. “I leave the detailed arrangements to thy camp of experts─Lady Izuko…was it? Do as ye wish. I shall visit thy location after having made my preparations. I shall do my best to make a full recovery by then─and be fully restored. Thou ought to erase that sign and seal on thy face, Sir Araragi. I shall neither run nor hide, but ye may do either if ye wish.”

If ye will accept this duel, do not fail to say thy final farewell to Kissshot─he advised before turning his heels.

With Episode and Miss Gaen shutting down the entrance, he should’ve been trapped in the empty lot, but that was a two-dimensional way of looking at things.

He flew into the air─jumped.

As if he’d used Ononoki’s Unlimited Rulebook. I’ve also heard that once upon a time, a certain legendary vampire needed to jump with only one leg to fly from Japan to the South Pole.

His feat was nowhere near that─but the boy Aberration Slayer, notwithstanding his incomplete recovery, jumped in a way that didn’t seem possible with the sun still shining. He easily cleared any walls built to block humans.

“A─”

Are you going to run, you coward, I began to say, before swallowing the words─he said he wouldn’t run or hide. I, relieved that he’d left this place and my sight, was the coward and the chicken here.

I wouldn’t have to speak to him anymore.

I didn’t have to face him─and that gave me peace of mind.

Even facing my smallness as a man felt easier in comparison─that’s how much calmer I felt.

But forget about me. What about the two experts who’d just appeared─why weren’t Episode and Miss Gaen chasing after him? Unlike me, they had no reason to watch him run away─this was Miss Gaen’s chance to get her hands on the first Aberration Slayer during the day, probably an unexpected twist.

Why didn’t they give chase? And couldn’t they have kept the boy Aberration Slayer from jumping in the first place? Taking away his ability to take to the skies─did they realize it almost looked like they wanted him to run away?

“Oh.”

But once he was no longer visible in the sky, I turned around to Miss Gaen and Episode─which dispelled my doubts. It’s not that they didn’t chase after him, they couldn’t─they had no choice but to stop.

When Episode threw his massive silver cross to shatter my plastic bottle, and the pressure of the wind pushed me back, I somehow dodged its destruction─but I’d ended up tossing the plastic bag I held in my hand opposite the one holding the bottle. Maybe the tape on it was weak, but the contents had spilled out onto the ground where it landed─down to even the receipt.

The situation called for Miss Gaen and Episode to give chase after the flying first Aberration Slayer, and their highly professional, instant judgment moved them to do so, but they’d been nailed to the ground by the items scattered at their would-be point of departure.

Nailed to the ground.

Nailed by the four volumes that had spilled from the plastic bag─each of them taking two and freezing as if they couldn’t believe their own eyes.

Episode, the half-vampire expert, held both volumes of The Savage Garçon Huffs and Puffs and Blows the Half-Boy Down!─while Izuko Gaen held the two cougar photo books featuring a woman with a fashion sense obviously like hers.

They both stood there, frozen, a volume in each hand.

“N-No, you’ve got it all wrong!”

They were mostly right.

And thus, the Aberration Slayer─first thrall of Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade─eluded capture once again.