Monogatari Series - Volume 4 - Chapter 0.15

015

“Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyi─ppee!”

That was the first cry to come from Kissshot in her perfect form.

After she woke up that night, I gave her the three parts I had received from Oshino─I had to think about it for a while, but I decided to tell her the whole truth about her heart. Kissshot simply replied with a happy-go-lucky “ah ha” before taking the kind of bite out of her own bright red heart that you would expect from someone eating an apple.

It’s only polite not to bother a lady with one’s presence while she’s eating. So I exited into the hallway.

And after a little while─I heard that shriek of joy. Filled with happiness, from the bottom of her heart.

I opened the door and went back inside the classroom. Standing there was Kissshot in her perfect form.

It was she─the woman I’d met under the street lamp that day.

Her golden hair. It was now even longer and loosely tied together at her nape.

A chic dress─and she was far taller than me.

She was simply beautiful.

Not just “cute” or “cool”─it seemed like the first time in my life that I was struck by actual beauty.

No.

I’d felt the same way that day, too.

She truly was perfect. Her form was one of perfection.

“Woo-hooo! I’m back, I’m baaack!”

“……”

Well, if she weren’t skipping around in the classroom so wildly in her perfect form, perhaps I’d have felt even more struck, even moved.

She really was whooping it up. Forget dignity.

“By the way, Kissshot…it seems like Oshino took his leave this afternoon.”

“Hm? So what?”

“Well, your heart. Aren’t you going to get mad at him?”

“’Tis a trifling matter, I shall grant him forgiveness─I mean, I don’t care!”

Kee hee hee, she laughed girlishly in spite of her current form, still hopping and skipping around.

Hrmm.

I hadn’t noticed when she was under that street lamp, given the circumstances…but Kissshot’s breasts were huge.

Every time she skipped, they bounced and bounced, bounced and bounced.

The bust of her dress was fairly exposed, as well.

Ah, so that (ten years old), by way of that (seventeen years old), finally ended up like this (twenty-seven years old)…

A grand mystery.

“……”

With her feeling so happy and hyper, maybe she’d let me touch those breasts if I asked─the low thought passed through my mind, but I didn’t have the courage to put the plan into action.

It certainly didn’t mesh with being moved.

“Hm.”

Halt.

Kissshot stopped moving.

Wait, had she read my mind?

I suddenly felt uneasy and asked her, “Wh-What’s wrong, Kissshot?”

I felt like my voice was quivering slightly, too.

“………”

Kissshot didn’t move for a while, only causing my discomfort to grow, but after a bit, she replied, “Huh? What is it? Were ye speaking to my afterimage?”

“Y-Your afterimage?”

“I just circled the Earth seven and a half times.”

“What are you, light?!” I interjected for what would probably be the first and only time in my life.

“Just kidding, just kidding! If I had circled it seven and a half times, I would be in Brazil right now!” Kissshot cackled.

Sheesh, she really was being hyper.

“Mhhm. It is truly a wonderful thing to be myself and complete─my dear servant.”

Kissshot frolicked for another two hours or so, but at last she began to calm down.

Once she did, she said, “Allow me to give my thanks once again. Of course, I had expected thee to do a splendid job of gathering my arms and legs, but even to collect my heart, which I had not even noticed was missing, was quite unanticipated. I bestow my praise upon thee.”

“I dunno about that.”

Though she thanked and praised me, something still didn’t feel right. I just couldn’t get rid of the sense that everything had been fixed. That I’d danced to someone’s tune.

“It feels like all I did was wander around aimlessly─rather than me gathering them, they just gathered together,” I said.

If anyone deserved credit, it was probably Oshino. But he wouldn’t like my saying so. In that case, it was thanks to Hanekawa.

Tsubasa Hanekawa.

By the way, she wasn’t visiting that night. The next time we met would be during the new school year─as we’d decided. Together.

Of course, now that all three of the three vampire hunters had been defeated, it seemed unthinkable that coming would put her in danger all over again─but we’d judged that it was best for her to stay away from the abandoned cram school.

Plus, it hadn’t been a given that Guillotine Cutter would return Kissshot’s arms when we’d agreed on that.

I say the new school year like it was some far-off event─but it was only two days away.

Just around the corner.

The next time we met─I’d be human.

Should be, at least.

…Oshino left having avoided Hanekawa, openly at the end, but perhaps Hanekawa had wanted to at least meet him? In fact─I’d forgotten to ask her.

Whatever. There was nothing I could do about it.

At any rate.

“Kissshot. I’m sorry to have to ask this when you’re celebrating─but I’d like you to hurry up and turn me back into a human.”

“Ah yes, there was that matter. Calm thyself, I shall turn thee back─but, my servant. Won’t ye have a little talk with me first?”

“A talk?”

“There is so much─well, not much to talk about. Only, in turning thee back into a human, there is something I wish to discuss,” Kissshot said in a perfectly cool tone. Her cold eyes had returned as well.

She seemed to be serious now.

“Sure, I guess.”

“Mm. Then let us change our venue.”

“We can’t do it here?”

“Doing so would pose no problem, but, well, I’d like to create the right mood.”

Let’s go upstairs, Kissshot said.

I did as she said, leaving the classroom and climbing the stairs─it looked like it had stopped raining, but it was now night. No matter where I went, there was no danger of evaporating.

Kissshot overtook me partway up the stairs, and she ended up climbing to the fourth floor. She chose the same classroom Oshino and I had entered that afternoon. Just as I was fully expecting to begin our talk there, Kissshot asked in a sullen voice, “Can we go no higher?”

“They probably don’t have a usable rooftop. I didn’t see anything like an emergency exit up to it, either,” I said.

“Hmph.”

Kissshot glared at the ceiling.

Sharply.

When she did, a portion of it blew off.

Concrete began to crumble down on us, but making no effort to dodge, she said, “Come with me, servant.”

Then (as if it were the most natural thing to do) she sprouted bat-like wings (!) from her exposed back─her dress being just as revealing there as it was on the front─and flapped her way outside through the hole that her gaze had punched in the ceiling.

“……”

I didn’t know where to begin with that one.

Her biology seemed to be made up of plot holes.

Wait, so Kissshot was able to destroy things with her gaze… Even Episode’s mean stare paled in comparison to that.

She outclassed Dramaturgy’s abilities of transformation, too. She’d sprouted those wings.

I attempted to do the same, but while I could do plants after my years of visualization practice, I’d never even imagined myself with wings before. It wasn’t happening.

So I just jumped up through the hole.

Making that kind of jump is still pretty impressive, you know?

We were on the rooftop floor of the abandoned, ruined cram school─well, “rooftop floor” might not be accurate. We were just on top of a roof.

And there, on top of that roof, Kissshot sat, her arms around her legs.

Under the starlight, sitting there looking almost melancholic, she had a strange sensuality to her. I began to feel kind of nervous.

Somehow.

I grew timid and shrank.

Her perfect form─a perfect figure.

A perfect existence.

A greater existence.

I felt reminded of the fact that, after all, I was nothing more than her thrall.

“Hm?” Kissshot abruptly looked my way. “What is the matter? Approach me.”

“…Okay.”

I did as she said─and sat down next to Kissshot.

Then, suddenly, she hit me with a head-butt.

Nailed me, forehead to forehead.

“Wh-What was that for?!”

“Why cower so? Thou art my precious servant. I won’t eat thee.”

“O-Oh…”

Her words showed that she knew exactly how I was feeling.

But she was right─seeing Kissshot laugh, I felt stupid to be cowering. The thought helped me relax all at once.

“Now, what do I talk about with thee?”

“Wasn’t there something you wanted to discuss?”

In turning me back into a human. She’d said so.

“Ah, that was not quite accurate. It is not that I wish to speak to thee of something. I merely wish to speak with thee of something.”

“? That’s an odd thing to say.”

Let’s chat.

I recalled Hanekawa saying something along those lines to me once.

Well, vampire or not, I guess she was a woman?

Maybe she enjoyed chatting.

Perhaps this was like her full-recovery party.

“And this is something necessary in order to turn me back into a human?”

“Indeed it is. For me.”

“Hmph. You’ve lived for five hundred years, though. You must have tons of things to talk about.”

“Nothing in particular,” Kissshot said. “All of these years, I have been battling the likes of those three─and before I knew it, I’d become a legend. True, a man like that boy is rare─”

“By ‘boy’…you mean Oshino.”

“To steal away my heart unnoticed is quite the feat. I’ve no memories of ever being inattentive─I don’t so much as know when the two of us crossed paths.”

“Who is he, exactly?”

“A good question. But even I shiver at the thought of what would have been had the boy decided to devote himself wholly to the hunting of vampires. Thankfully, he is an opportunist who only tries to secure himself a middle ground.”

“An opportunist…”

Part of me thought it was a nasty thing to call him, but it also seemed like a surprisingly fitting title. So much so that I could see Oshino gleefully taking it on if I told him.

“Which is why these events have been a reasonably stimulating experience for me─but mostly it has been five hundred years of boredom… Let me see. If there is anything for me to speak of, that man would be it.”

“‘That man’?”

“Thou art the second thrall I have created, as I trust I have told thee. This would be about my first thrall.”

“Your first…”

Um, how long ago did she say that was? Four hundred years?

“Yeah, you did mention it. Something about it being your second time, and the first in four hundred years─like you were some team getting to the World Series.”

“The World Series?”

“Er, never mind. Just trying to find an example. Anyway, what was that first thrall of yours like? I’m interested.”

“Very well, then I shall tell.”

“Was he like me?”

“? Why do ye think so?”

“Er, because─”

I hadn’t told her this yet. Oshino was gone, so I guess it’d be fine.

“Oshino actually taught me something. He said that vampires suck blood for one of two reasons, and that you don’t necessarily become a thrall when your blood is sucked.”

“Mmf.” Kissshot knit her brows. “…Don’t be mistaken. It was not as if I wanted to spare thy life─I simply needed a thrall and used thee to collect my limbs. I suppose I can reveal this now, but had I told thee, ye might not have obeyed me, so I lied.”

“Oshino also said that you’d probably say that.”

“……”

Kissshot fell silent. And remained silent.

Was it because I was right on the mark, or was it because I’d missed it? I didn’t know which.

“W-Well, anyway, that’s why I thought he might be like me─after all, we’re the only two you chose to be your thralls.”

As I tried to backtrack, thinking that maybe I should’ve kept mum after all, Kissshot refuted my hypothesis. “The only trait I’d say ye share with him is thy race. He was a warrior─a warrior so mighty I could entrust my back to him.”

“Huh… Well, I couldn’t be entrusted with that, I suppose.”

Entrust me? Maybe with her keys or something.

Nah, not even her keys.

“Hey, that was four hundred years ago. Unlike now, all the men were warriors, basically.”

“Thy view of history is quite prejudiced and warped, I must say.”

“Guh.”

I do suck at world history.

“I mean, you know how I am. I’m not good at…” I said, fishing for the English word, “at thinking hysterically.”

“I was not aware that ‘in a historical manner’ was the subtle connotation of that word.”

Now she knew that I sucked at English, too.

“Be that as it may, this country has grown quite peaceful since I last visited long ago─as if it has been cut off from the rest of the world.”

“Well, excuse us for being so blissfully civilian.”

I didn’t see it as a bad thing, but it was certainly true that I was no warrior.

No matter how much I tried to mimic the heroes of those superpowered school action titles, I was just a regular person. Whatever skills I may have gained as a vampire, it was like a middle schooler getting his hands on a butterfly knife.

Kissshot must have felt let down.

Especially if the first person was so incredible.

“Well, whether you made me into your thrall out of consideration for my life, or if you did it so that I’d collect your limbs, in the end, it was just an emergency measure… I guess there’d be no reason for me and that first person to have anything in common. But you did say that we were the same race, right?”

“Indeed.”

“So, what, he was Asian? Surely not Japanese, though. Continental Asian?”

“No, a Japanese,” she said unexpectedly. “I was gallivanting around the world, my youth getting the better of me, and I met the man here in this country. And that is when I learned Japanese as well─though much seems to have changed with the language since then.”

“Japan four hundred years ago…”

That would be the Edo Period? I think?

I suck at Japanese history, too.

Well, I’m bad at everything other than math.

“So he wasn’t a warrior, he was a samurai…”

“Hm? Ah, perhaps he was.” Kissshot nodded. “Either way, he was strong.”

“Huh─but in that case, you should’ve gotten him to help you this time around, too. If he’s your thrall, that would make him like another one of your servants, right? Then you wouldn’t have had to take the risk with me and─”

“It wasn’t possible. He is already dead,” Kissshot said as if to cut me off.

Actually, she did cut me off.

“That too happened in the distant past… Remember I said that I sometimes wield a sword in battle?”

“Hm?”

She did?

Wait, that’s right, we’d been talking about Dramaturgy’s great-swords then. She could use her power to generate matter to create a sword, or something.

I’d completely forgotten. Still, I was glad I remembered without messing around in my brain.

“The sword is a keepsake from him.”

With those words, Kissshot flattened the fingers on her right hand and thrust them into her own stomach. Her hand pierced her dress, and her nails dug straight into her innards.

Just when I’d avoided picking around my brain…

Unconcerned by my stunned expression, Kissshot pulled her right hand out from her abdomen─and she was gripping what appeared to be the hilt of a sword.

What’s more, judging from the hilt─was it a Japanese sword?

I’d guessed right.

The sword Kissshot drew from her own stomach was a great katana more than six feet long.

“The enchanted blade Kokorowatari─it may be by an unknown swordsmith, but apparently it is a fine piece. Of course, I’m not very familiar with these─a sword serves its purpose for me if it cuts well.”

“Wow…”

The wound on Kissshot’s stomach was already healing─so I could focus on the sword. It was long…but not as long as Dramaturgy’s. Still, while Dramaturgy’s flamberges did have somewhat of an artistic shape, I couldn’t deny that a katana had its own unique flavor.

To be frank, a Japanese sword didn’t seem to match the blond, dress-wearing Kissshot at all─and to begin with, fine or not, could any such weapon withstand a vampire’s supernatural strength?

“Don’t move,” she said.

Fwip, Kissshot swung her sword, Kokorowatari, as if to flick dust off of it.

But that wasn’t her intention.

“Hey─”

“Don’t move. I just cut thee.”

“Uh, what?”

“Does it hurt?”

“N-No─”

“Hm. Then my skills do not seem to have dulled─ye may move now. Ye’ve already healed.”

“Wh-What? Are you following up that going around the Earth seven-and-a-half times thing with another lie? Even if I heal, I’m not able to heal my clothes, remember? Where did you cut me?”

“Through thy torso, sideways. Ah, the happy things I slice.”

“You mean ‘sorry’!”

“Worry not about thy clothes, either. Kokorowatari’s edge is inarguably sharp─so much so that whatever it cuts pulls itself back together with time. Of course, only because it is wielded by one with my skill at arms.”

“……”

She didn’t seem to be kidding.

Seriously?

“But how is that sword able to withstand your skill─and your arm strength? It’s just a regular sword, right?”

“It is not the original. My first thrall created this with his flesh and blood using the original as material. Furthermore, I inherited it. Well, a too-sharp blade presents its own problems since what it slices sticks back together no matter how many times I cut. One might say that the blade is suited to cutting down aberrations and nothing else.”

“The aberration cutter, huh?”

“Indeed. ‘Kokorowatari’ is slightly difficult to pronounce, and it is by the name ‘aberration slayer’ that my foes came to know it. That was not always my moniker, but the blade’s,” Kissshot said─as she stored the sword back in her stomach.

It looked like she was committing seppuku.

She sure was immortal.

But then, she said the sword was a memento from her first thrall, who should have been just as immortal… Yet he was already dead.

“If an immortal vampire died, does that mean─he was slain by a hunter?”

Dramaturgy, Episode, Guillotine Cutter─did people like them exist four hundred years ago?

But Kissshot replied with a no.

“He was not a man to be slain even on his worst day.”

“Then how did he die?”

He was immortal. How else could he die?

“Suicide,” Kissshot said dispassionately.

Her cold eyes were downcast, facing the town spread out below her.

“A common reason, one accounting for nine-tenths of vampire deaths.”

“……”

“Incidentally, the remaining tenth succumb to vampire slayers─any other reasons fit within the margins of a rounding error.”

“Suicide? Why?”

“Do they not speak of dying of boredom?”

Boredom─was a killer.

Guilt could kill too─but boredom was absolutely lethal.

“While it of course depends on the situation and the age, most vampires, whether pure-blooded or formerly human, wish to die after living for two hundred years.”

“But─how does a vampire commit suicide? We’re immortal.”

“The simplest way is to throw one’s body under the sun as ye did that first day. They throw themselves to their deaths.”

“Well put, I guess…”

But─was that how it was?

I thought back to that day, and sure enough, Kissshot had asked me if I had a death wish.

“If there was anything odd about that man, it was that he chose death only a few short years after becoming a vampire─when barely anything changes in such a short time.”

He died before my eyes─Kissshot said.

By throwing himself under the sun.

He made a display of it. He flaunted it.

“And after that,” Kisshot muttered, “I created no thralls. Until I met thee, that is.”

“…Didn’t you get bored yourself?” I asked, though maybe it was inappropriate. “You’ve lived not just two hundred years─but five hundred.”

“How could I not be bored?” Kissshot replied without drama. “I’ve had nothing to do.”

“……”

“Nothing─absolutely nothing for me to ever do. When there is, those vampire hunters respond by swarming to me like flies─just as those three followed me here on my sightseeing trip.”

“Sightseeing.”

That, I thought, was probably a lie. But then again, maybe it was true─if it was here in this country that she created her first thrall─

“…Yet I was not bored by thee, my servant. Thy actions, every one of them─were absurd.”

It must have been the first time in history that a human had offered his own neck to a vampire, Kissshot observed with an amused laugh.

Compared to the age she looked now, it was such a childlike laugh.

“Ye also dared to call me Kissshot from the beginning.”

“Oh… I never got a good chance to ask about it, but everyone sounds surprised when I call you by that name. Even Oshino. Am I not supposed to or something?”

“It is the rare fool who calls a vampire by her true name.”

“True name? Is that like a first name?”

“…To try to explain it would be foolish as well. But perhaps ’tis generational, or rather, epochal. I speak not only of myself, but of those three as well. Out of fashion and out of date. If we wanted to match the current age, perhaps we need to appear as that boy does.”

“You think you need to dress like Oshino? No way, I’d never accept anything about that sleaze ball as being ideal.”

“I speak more of reality than ideals.”

In any case, Kissshot said.

“That is about all I can speak of. And now I am more interested in hearing thy story. Seventeen years, correct? Ye can’t have spent all of it idly. Try to amuse me.”

“Ack.”

Whatta way to put me on the spot.

Plus, she’d set the bar very high for interesting stories.

“U-Umm… Okay, then how about a funny little story. There was once a man. While he was a decent young man, he had a weakness for drink. If that was all, you could write it off as a personal foible, but one day, he drove drunk and struck a young girl crossing on a green light, her hand up in the air. Drunk as he was, he didn’t notice that he’d hit the girl until the next morning, when he saw the blood on his car’s bumper in his apartment’s parking lot. He then learned through the newspaper that the name of the girl he struck was ‘Rika.’ Turning himself in would be the right thing to do, but the man hesitated. There should have been no witnesses, so if he never spoke up… While he wrestled with such thoughts, night came─and that was when the phone in his apartment rang. ‘My name’s Rika. I’m in front of your apartment,’ the voice simply said, before the line died. ‘Rika?! That’s impossible!’ The man began to tremble. The voice was unmistakably a young child’s lisp. Could it be the girl he ran over, the one that should be dead? Then the phone rang for a second time. ‘My name’s Rika. I’m on the first floor now.’ The man’s room was on the fifth! Surely, that was where ‘Rika’ was headed. Upon realizing this, the man’s trembling gave way to terror. Then, a third call. ‘My name’s Rika. I just got on the elevator.’ What─too lazy to use the stairs?!”

“……”

I’d bombed.

And after I’d gone on for so long, too.

I’d tried to mimic the style of a raconteur, which may have been incredibly grating.

“No, not that kind. A regular, interesting story,” Kissshot said.

“Urk…”

My pride was wounded!

I was more used to playing the straight man…

But I couldn’t turn back, not after being dismissed like that!

“O-Okay, then part two!”

“Oh?”

“An old proverb: ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a yaaay!’”

“………”

She didn’t even grin.

One-liners weren’t working out, either.

“Fine, then part three! Let me tell you an embarrassing story. That bit earlier about world history reminded me of it!”

“I’m expecting quite a bit of this.”

“Once, on a test, I was asked the following: ‘Prior to World War II, Japan faced the ABCD line. Give the names of the countries corresponding to each of the letters in ABCD.’ So this is how I answered! ‘A: U.S.A., B: Great Britain, C : China, and…D: Deutschland’!”

“……”

Kissshot cocked her head to the side.

She wasn’t even going to laugh at my embarrassing stories?

“Um… Well you see, what’s funny is that while I correctly answered ‘U.S.A.’ and ‘Great Britain’ though they don’t start with those letters, I couldn’t figure out what ‘D’ stood for and went with the first thing I could think of, even though it was in German. But like, Germany was on the Axis side?”

I was now being reduced to explaining my own jokes.

In response Kissshot said, “What sort of line is this ABCD line?”

“That’s right, our common sense means nothing to you!”

What a sad way for a joke to fall flat.

And then we continued, until, at last, the clock ticked to midnight, bringing the date to April 7th─which meant that Kissshot and I spoke on top of the abandoned building’s roof until the last day of Naoetsu High’s spring break was here.

While I’d felt like Kissshot’s cold eyes were brimming with an intent to stifle my parade of silly jokes, partway through, the two of us found ourselves in one of those moods where anything is funny, and both of us started to erupt in laughter at whatever either of us said.

I think most of it was meaningless talk.

I think most of it was empty talk.

But probably─

When I look back on that spring break, the most vivid memory from it, the one I’d never forget, was going to be chatting with Kissshot that day, that time there.

It would be the fact that we laughed together.

“All right,” Kissshot said, standing as she wiped tears of laughter out of her still-cold eyes, “I suppose it’s about time to turn thee back into a human.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

That was right─I had somehow forgotten.

I surprised even myself… How does someone forget something that important?

I’d spent too much time having fun, but, well─the party was winding down.

“Speaking of which─didn’t your first thrall ever say that he wanted to turn back into a human?”

“…Mmm, that’s iffy.”

“Iffy?”

What an uncharacteristically contemporary word for her.

“At that time I was in fact unable to turn him back into a human─and I plan to use the lessons I learned then this time around. Are ye ready?”

“Er… Well, I’m actually a little hungry. I think it’s because I laughed so much. Could I get a bite to eat first? I’m pretty sure we’re out of food, so can I quickly go get something?”

“Hm? I am famished too, after suddenly returning to my perfect form─but is thy hunger so pressing?”

“Uh, not really.”

“Will ye bring back thy rations here?”

“Rations…”

What a weird way to put it. Was it just her dated sensibility?

“Well, it’s my last night as a vampire. I think it’s me being reluctant to just quit being one. Is there anything you want?”

“I’ve neither likes nor dislikes.”

“Huh.”

Only a convenience store would be open at that hour, of course, so it wasn’t like we had many options.

“Very well. Follow thy heart, servant. I shall humor thy sentiment of wanting to remain my servant for a while longer─I will make preparations on the second floor.”

“’Kay.”

And with that, our conversation on the roof came to an end.

While I said only convenience stores would be open, the closest one was pretty far away─it would take an hour, round-trip, from the abandoned cram school.

That is, if I didn’t run there using the leg speed of a vampire.

But─I didn’t feel like running. If anything, I walked at a deliberate pace.

Phew.

What to do.

“I suppose it’s about time to turn thee back into a human,” she’d said. I couldn’t deny that I’d balked after her all-too-casual words.

After all, I was a chicken, and I was a loser.

However─my telling Kissshot that I was “reluctant to just quit being one” was a convenient lie. Of course it wasn’t that I wanted to be her servant for just a little more. How could I?

But…

I was reluctant to say goodbye to her.

“…Hrrm.”

And probably…Kissshot felt the same way.

Something to discuss in turning me back into a human─in the end, there’d been nothing.

All she’d wanted to do was talk to me. Finish with a little get-together.

“I dunno.”

Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.

The iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire.

The legendary vampire.

The aberration slayer.

“I guess─she’s going to go off somewhere.”

She’d recovered all of her body parts. There’d be no reason for her to stay any longer in this town─or country.

Sightseeing, she’d said.

Considering the story about her first thrall, this was probably like a trip down memory lane for her─only, this visit had left those memories plastered over with unimaginably awful ones.

A stolen heart and four torn-off limbs.

She created a second thrall out of desperation, but he was a regular person. Not only that, he told her he wanted to become human again.

At least she said I didn’t bore her.

“She said she’d been invited to become a god, but declined─what a contrast with Guillotine Cutter.”

She would leave this country, and then what? Wander the world again?

No, she said that she only gallivanted around because her youth had gotten the better of her. So maybe she didn’t travel that much lately.

Could she even ride planes, to begin with? Wait─she could just sprout wings and fly through the air. What a convenient body.

Still, I wasn’t reluctant to quit being a vampire.

Probably the only thing that bound me and Kissshot was my being one, and I’d simply gotten cold feet about losing our tie.

I felt like I understood why Oshino, despite being such a joker, never said goodbye.

“What can you do, though?”

Meetings and partings. That was life.

It may have been two weeks full of horrible memories for Kissshot, but looking back on it, maybe it hadn’t been such a bad spring break for me.

Maybe it hadn’t been so bad.

And because I could think so─

“All right.”

I decided to follow up our get-together with our farewell party.

Wanting to go out with as big of a bang as possible, I scraped together what money I had left to buy all the cakes and sweets I could at the convenience store, and then headed back to the abandoned cram school with a newfound spring in my step.

On the way back, I swore I’d say my goodbyes to Kissshot─and then arrived at the second-floor classroom.

The date was April 7th.

The time was past two in the morning.

“I’m ho-o-me!”

Trying my best to sound cheerful, I opened the door.

Kissshot was eating.

Chomp chomp. Chew chew. Gnaw gnaw.

Chomp chomp. Chew chew. Gnaw gnaw.

Chomp chomp. Chew chew. Gnaw gnaw.

Chomp chomp. Chew chew. Gnaw gnaw.

She was eating─a human.

“…Wha?”

The convenience store bag fell out of my hands.

The sound it made caused Kissshot to turn around.

Still in her hands.

A human head, gnawed halfway through.

“Ah, my servant─back earlier than I expected. But did I not tell thee? Have some manners and excuse thyself when a lady is eating.”

I had seen the head somewhere before.

One of the three─one of the vampire hunters.

The one human among them.

It was Guillotine Cutter.

His body, his flesh, had been torn to pieces─minced into bite-sized fragments.

Served open and whole.

“He came by as I awaited thy return─it seems that even this barrier fails to hide my presence now that my powers are at their fullest. Then again, he came at the perfect time, just as I was feeling hungry. A handy restorative.”

And then.

Kissshot seemed to be looking for someone behind me.

She tilted her head quizzically.

“What is this? Had ye not gone out to fetch those bespectacled, braided rations?”