Monogatari Series - Volume 4 - Chapter 0.16

016

I didn’t know of a place to put myself at a time like this─I couldn’t go home, of course, but I also didn’t have the mental or emotional composure needed to find another place like the abandoned cram school, if it even existed in the first place.

The clock was ticking. Time was inching closer and closer to the moment day broke─inching me right into a corner.

Eventually, I decided to stick not just one, but both hands into my head, mixing and messing up the brains it held, thinking of every possibility I could─until I decided to use Naoetsu High’s P.E. storage shed as a temporary shelter.

A temporary shelter─for someone who needed exactly that.

But the windowless P.E. shed, separated from the outside world by steel doors, seemed to be a suitable place for someone like me─a vampire─to hide even during the day. Not such a bad spot, considering my desperation. I found myself truly glad that I’d done everything I could to force the steel door back into working shape the day I fought Dramaturgy─okay, maybe not.

There wasn’t a thing to be glad about.

It was all wrong.

“Uunh… Uuuuunnnnnhhhhhhh…”

You could hear my teeth chattering.

My body wouldn’t stop shaking.

Why?

Why?

Why hadn’t I realized?

Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade─a vampire.

A vampire.

Weak to the sun.

Didn’t like crosses.

Didn’t like silver bullets. Didn’t like holy water. Didn’t like garlic.

Didn’t like poison.

Died if you stuck a stake through her heart.

Didn’t cast a shadow, didn’t show in mirrors.

Fangs.

Immortal.

Semi-permanent powers of regeneration.

Eyes that could see well, even in the dark.

The ability to transform.

Had blood with healing powers.

And─ate humans.

“Uuuunh…. Uwaaaaaaaaagh!”

I moaned and groaned and wailed─

But all I found myself with was regret.

I stuck my hand in my head and kept messing around with my brain, thinking over and over─where did I go wrong, how did I go wrong, how did it turn out this way?

But in the end…it was all wrong.

“Uunh…. Uuuuuuuunnnnh!”

Humans were food to vampires.

As greater beings, humans were below them, located at the very bottom of the food chain.

Didn’t I know that? From the very beginning of it all?

In fact─she’d tried to kill me, right?

She tried to eat me, right?

She tried to drink my blood until I was dry, right?

Worthless little human.

Ultimately, even I─

Was just food to her.

Even if it did feel like I understood her.

Even if I felt a bond between us, on my part.

In the end─I was food.

“……”

To Kissshot, all humans were.

Every human was the same to her.

Of course, she did speak highly of Oshino’s skills. That’s just how impressive they were.

Perhaps she’d discussed them with him when I wasn’t around─but still, humans were humans.

Food was food.

Even Oshino knew that.

As proof, didn’t he leave the ruins before Kissshot could regain her perfect form and skills as a vampire?

Plus.

When I really thought about it─Kissshot had barely said anything to Hanekawa. It wasn’t just that she was ignoring her─

Right.

Hanekawa was food to Kissshot.

Not my friend.

She saw her as rations.

My rations, vampire rations.

Hanekawa could have fallen victim to Kissshot’s powers had the two met after she regained them.

Just as Guillotine Cutter had.

She could’ve been cut into pieces and eaten.

“Ye often hear that holy men taste dreadful─but he was quite the delicacy. While I don’t have likes and dislikes, an empty stomach truly is the greatest sauce of all.”

“Er…”

As she coquettishly licked away the blood and meat stuck to her mouth, I mustered an answer. I had to muster my bravery and suppress my fear before I could tell her.

“Y-You can’t─eat humans.”

“Hm?”

She seemed honestly confused as to what I meant. Kissshot’s head was cocked far to the side.

“But, my servant, don’t ye know I’ll die if I don’t eat?”

She was right.

She was exactly right.

It was such an obvious reason.

Almost too simple.

And Kissshot seemed to have no doubts concerning that reason─she didn’t even feel the need to persuade me, a former human who was trying to become human again soon.

She thought it was common sense.

It probably was common sense.

I was sure it was something she’d always done.

They’d always been eating humans.

Vampires.

Her first thrall─and then her second thrall.

How could she have only sucked the blood of two people in her five hundred years alive? Every other human she’d fed on, she’d eaten like that. She tore them into pieces and left neither flesh nor bone behind.

That was how she nourished herself when she wasn’t creating a thrall.

I’d been told.

Apparently, the idea that humans turn into vampires when their blood is sucked by another vampire isn’t entirely wrong. Unless proper measures are taken after their blood is sucked, people do turn into vampires.

All it took was a drop of blood sucked.

That was enough─it turned any human into a vampire.

And those “proper measures”were to─eat every fragment of the human’s body. Doing so would nourish a vampire more than any other method─plus, it prevented the human’s body from rising as a vampire after the bloodsucking.

That seemed to be how it worked.

Because I only had my blood sucked, I turned into a vampire.

But Guillotine Cutter?

He was eaten as food─flesh and all.

And not just Guillotine Cutter. It was something Kissshot had done over and over again in her five hundred years.

An obvious fact.

It was as clear as day─yet I hadn’t realized or tried to realize. All I’d done was avert my eyes, for all this time.

Right. It was just that I’d been clueless.

Even when I first met her, when I didn’t try to help Kissshot despite her being so close to death─she hadn’t understood right away.

She didn’t understand why I wasn’t helping her.

Why a human─food─might not help a vampire.

Predator and prey. That was the only relationship between the two of us.

“Unh, uuuunh… Aahh…”

Guillotine Cutter.

I hated him.

A cowardly, base man that I was loathe to call human.

But still─

I hadn’t wanted him to die.

Though he was awful to Hanekawa─it was my fault.

My fault, for being a vampire.

Guillotine Cutter. He didn’t care about the reasons or means just as long as it meant another monster exterminated.

“N-No. No, no, no! No. I don’t want to think about this─I don’t want to think about this!!”

I pulled my hands out of my brain and clutched my head.

“No!”

But my brain wouldn’t stop thinking. And not just about Guillotine Cutter.

Dramaturgy. Episode.

Even those two, who’d already gone back to their countries, had been here to slay a vampire─and it was no one else but me who’d gotten in their way.

After all the trouble they went to.

They fought to take Kissshot’s arms and legs from her─but I stole them back. And then, of all things, I restored the legendary vampire─to her perfect state.

To say nothing of Guillotine Cutter, any humans whom Kissshot ate after this─every time she fed─

The fault would lie entirely on my shoulders.

If she ate Hanekawa.

If she ate my sisters.

If she ate my parents.

It would all be my fault.

My fault for helping her.

It wasn’t just about her limbs and her heart.

It started with that first day.

If I hadn’t helped out Kissshot when she was under that street lamp─if I’d only been able to abandon her─the story would have ended there.

I understood only now, but it was because I was a weak person that I couldn’t just leave her there.

It wasn’t anything like Hanekawa’s strength.

It was a kind of weakness that bore no resemblance at all to her kindness, which Oshino called gross and I thought was scary.

That, if anything, was self-satisfaction masquerading as self-sacrifice.

Leading a devil-may-care life─didn’t mean I should take the same attitude toward death.

What if I’d been eaten there by a vampire and died?

How would my sisters feel, for example?

Did I really think they wouldn’t cry?

“─Gurfft─!”

I somehow kept myself from vomiting.

I was about to cry, but I kept myself from doing that as well.

I was able to hold myself back because I had no idea what would happen if I let my defenses crumble.

I was afraid of losing control.

At that moment, I wanted to maintain my autonomy. Whatever little bit I could.

Kissshot and I had quarreled and argued until we didn’t know what we were saying─and I’d ended up storming out of the abandoned cram school despite having nowhere to go.

And that’s how I arrived at the P.E. shed.

The one dark place I could find in my memories.

The sun had to be rising by now─while it was spring break, kids that were in sports teams still came to school to practice during vacation. Fortunately for me, though, it was the last day of spring break. Extracurricular activities were prohibited.

I didn’t have to worry about any sports teams opening the door to the shed. Of course, I’d barricaded the entrance from inside, just to be safe.

“It’s my fault.”

I didn’t mean to speak out loud, but my thoughts began to escape from the edges of my mouth.

“It’s my fault that more people are─going to be eaten.”

By that vampire─whom no one could stop.

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

By Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade!

“It’s my fault─it’s my fault, it’s my fault!”

When I thought about it, Oshino must have seen this coming.

While he’d gone on about balance and whatnot, he hadn’t stolen Kissshot’s heart because someone had hired him to─her confrontation with those three came afterwards.

That meant it had to be an independent decision on his part. An act that deviated from his job, his role as an intermediary between here and there.

In other words─at least he’d made a judgment on behalf of the human side to steal Kissshot’s heart.

He wouldn’t go so far as to slay her. Establishing a balance was his way of doing things. An opportunist─I recalled the term that Kissshot used to describe Oshino.

And I had taken that balance that Oshino established─and destroyed it.

If it was unexpected for Kissshot to create a thrall, then it must have been equally unexpected for a human to save her when she was on the verge of death.

My being so foolish and toolish─

No one could have expected it.

I’d ruined all the work that those three had done.

I’d even won over Oshino, who had stolen her heart.

The one making everything complicated─was me.

I felt like someone had fixed things? What was I going on about? At this rate, I was the one who’d put in the fix. Every last aspect of this situation, every nook and cranny─was all my fault.

It was all because of my rash decision.

I’d been too weak to abandon a dying vampire─and this was the result.

Guillotine Cutter was dead.

Eaten and dead.

She’d bitten through his head and eaten his brain, skull and all─there was no way he was coming back. It didn’t matter if someone used vampire blood on him or not─he wasn’t coming back.

He was dead.

Death.

There was no turning back the clock now.

“How did this─”

And Guillotine Cutter wasn’t the end, but just the beginning. He was nothing more than a new start for the vampire Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade.

She’d continue to do what was normal for her─and eat.

I think someone once told me that you never escape the “mal” in “normal.”

Stopping her would be impossible now─Guillotine Cutter, the all-important hunter standing at the top of that three-man pyramid, had been eaten, and it wasn’t as if those three together could have slain her on their own.

Not Dramaturgy.

And not Episode.

No matter how much work or emotions drove them, they wouldn’t try to take on Kissshot now that she was in her perfect form─a fact that made me realize just how strong Guillotine Cutter’s sense of duty must have been for him to confront her alone.

I didn’t want to praise him. Not under any circumstances.

But still, he showed just how strong a human could be.

Though he knew it could be him that didn’t survive the encounter, he didn’t grow timid.

If anyone was being timid─it was me.

Mèmè Oshino─Oshino, the man who was able to steal Kissshot’s heart from her without her noticing, could just maybe stop her. But I doubted he would.

He was already done balancing everything out.

The game.

The situation─had come to a close.

Humans had lost.

Lost─to Kissshot.

And anyway, how could I possibly ask him after all that? “Please stop Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade”? There was no way I could utter those words.

If any request was off-limits to me now, that was it.

“─I just hate it.”

This spring break.

I’d never imagined that everything I’d done over it would turn out to be a mistake. And I’d even thought that despite all the twists and turns, it hadn’t been a bad spring break in retrospect─that it wasn’t so bad after all.

In reality, it was the worst spring break possible.

It was hell, plain and simple.

It was all a big joke that felt like hell.

And I was nothing but a clueless fool.

“I hate it, but…”

But.

Something else was also giving off smoke inside of me.

It made me feel regret and remorse, and I did everything I could to avert my attention from it─but I’d noticed one more terrifying fact.

And I could only avert my eyes for so long.

Right. There was one more obvious fact.

“I hate it, but I─”

It was too obvious, self-evident.

“I’m─a vampire too.”

No matter how I feared, loathed, and hated vampires─I was one myself.

Yup.

I could feel the weight of Oshino’s words.

Words that weighed heavily on my heart.

Words that weighed heavily─on my stomach.

─Oh, and by the way.

─This is simply out of curiosity, Araragi─

─But haven’t you felt hungry lately?

“…………!”

My stomach─was empty.

I now felt hunger.

─I see.

─I think─

─It’s time you started to feel hungry.

─It’s already been two weeks─

“Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit…!”

I could still hold out─for now.

It was just a little rumble in my stomach.

But─if Oshino’s words were meant to suggest what was happening to me now─soon, I would want to suck a human’s blood.

I would feel the urge to suck blood.

And I would want to eat a human being.

Why wouldn’t I? I was a monster.

I was a greater being.

“Dammit!”

Her first thrall.

There was no way for me to know what kind of man he was─but I began to think that this, or something like it, was the reason he took his own life after only a few years. I knew he was different from me─but in the end, we were the same. Unable to bear himself after being reduced to a monster─no, after being raised into one. Kissshot seemed to be unable to understand these emotions─but how could she?

They were human emotions.

And now, four hundred years later.

I, her second thrall─found myself in the same position.

“Heh… Hahahaha.”

At last─I began to laugh.

All I could do was laugh.

When I thought about it, it was a pretty comical situation.

It’d make for a great funny story.

I’d gone every which way and found out in the end that everything I’d done was a mistake─an audience, if I had one, would rate me a talented jester.

One person could only be so stupid. And I’d been so stupid that it was funny.

“What am I going to do now? My only option now is death.”

Obvious, one might say. It was the obvious conclusion.

Because what was the point?

Now? I didn’t have any desire to turn back into a human now.

To have my hopes fulfilled after the mess I made would be utter selfishness─or no.

Talking about selfishness was whitewashing the truth.

My thoughts weren’t as laudable as that.

I was simply scared.

Scared that the moment I turned back into a human─Kissshot would eat me.

Of course she would.

I was afraid of falling to the bottom of the food chain, that was all.

But it was no reason to stay a vampire.

I didn’t want to suck blood or eat people, either.

I even found myself detesting my immortal body.

And so.

“My only option is to die.”

And not in a devil-may-care way─I really had to die.

The cause of death for nine-tenths of vampires.

I wasn’t going to be dying of boredom.

But guilt─was absolutely lethal.

And so, I had no choice but to choose death, just as her first thrall did─it was the only path left to me.

Really, though─why had I decided to hide in the P.E. shed? Why had I tried to continue living, during daytime?

For example.

For example, I could clear the barricade, open the steel doors, and hurl my body onto the athletic field─and die there.

A death wish. Is that what she called it?

Of course, considering the recuperative power of a thrall of Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, I wouldn’t die easily even if I threw myself under the sun─it would be an endless cycle of evaporation and regeneration, but still.

I’d surely die before the sun set.

Surely, if I took off my clothes and bathed naked in the sun, in what would be my first and last try at public streaking.

The Vampirer’s New Clothes.

I agree, not even funny.

I told you I prefer playing the straight man to the funny man.

“…Oh jeez.”

I messed up.

Messed up big time.

I thought I could do a better job─and I thought I was doing a better job.

But look at how it actually turned out.

Hard even to look at.

Idiot, now all I could do was go and die.

“…Oh, right.”

The moment I made my decision, I grew calm again as if I’d been exorcized.

I needed to call home.

It had completely slipped my mind, but I was supposed to be on a journey of self-discovery─though in reality, I had managed to do the opposite and lose myself entirely.

Or maybe it would be better if I didn’t call them.

How’d I ever tell them that I was about to go off and die? It wasn’t like I could explain why. Maybe it was best to let it be─the eldest brother went missing while on a journey of self-discovery.

I didn’t know how they would take it, especially my parents. As for my little sisters, they might be able to joke about it─their brother, the runaway boy.

This wasn’t a fun little case of a runaway, though─it was as serious as you could get. But again, I thought, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

“Still─I wish I’d told Hanekawa.”

Besides, the right thing would have been to tell her.

Hanekawa didn’t deserve to be left in the dark after all of her involvement, after all I’d dragged her into─but unfortunately, I was currently in a P.E. shed to avoid both the sun’s rays and Kissshot, and I had no way to contact her.

I’d deleted her cell phone number and her email address myself.

In front of her.

To wound her.

While Hanekawa and I began meeting each other after that, it had felt too awkward to ask her for her contact info again. I was probably the only one feeling awkward about it─but I still felt bad.

What a chicken, what a loser.

While I was good at math, I wasn’t great with numbers. There was no way I could remember an eleven-digit phone number, and an alphabetic email address was hopeless. Her info would be on my phone if I’d contacted her even once─but I hadn’t a single time, nor had she. When I thought about it, Hanekawa didn’t have my number or email address either.

She still didn’t have my contact info.

If only I’d told her then.

…If only I’d told her─then what?

Did I think that Hanekawa was going to call me at this exact moment?

How ridiculous.

No matter how amazing Hanekawa was, she didn’t have ESP─life doesn’t unfold that conveniently.

If God liked stories to be that convenient, then I wouldn’t be in my position to begin with─and I wouldn’t have committed all those blunders.

While I realized it was an empty act of resistance, I still decided to pull out my cell phone, in part to check the time.

It was five in the afternoon. I’d been holed up for over twelve hours─though it didn’t feel like it at all. That was the only reaction as the empty indication of the time of day entered my field of vision and my brain.

Meanwhile, the pointless struggle of opening my contacts list─actually wasn’t pointless, and the fact struck me like a hammer blow.

Because there.

I found Tsubasa Hanekawa’s name.

“Like I said…” the words slipped from my mouth.

I found myself suddenly moved, despite my situation─I never imagined that I, of all people, would ever be moved by the inorganic screen of a mobile phone.

There wasn’t a thing to be glad about.

It was a spring break filled with nothing but misery as far as I knew.

“…Don’t mess with people’s phones without permission!”

She’d had plenty of opportunities.

It could’ve been when she came to the field to give me my phone while I was fighting Episode, or any other time. I was pretty lax about holding on to my cell phone and didn’t even keep it locked.

It’s not like I had much personal info at all on it─but.

My once-empty address book had an entry for Tsubasa Hanekawa’s name once again.

Her phone number─and her email address.

“……”

I’d thought it was fine.

I did want to talk to Hanekawa, and I thought I owed her a talk, but another part of me had thought that it would be fine if I never got to.

Not to say I thought it was fine to keep her in the dark.

But at the same time, I didn’t want to have to tell her anything.

So─while I went on about this turn of events being far too convenient, it might’ve been more convenient for me the other way.

But this was too much. I had no choice now.

Or rather─I did choose.

I sent a text to Hanekawa.

Because I was afraid I might cry if I called her.

I wondered what Hanekawa was up to on the last day of spring break─studying at the library, maybe? I didn’t know where the library was, but if she was, she might have her phone turned off.

Oh well.

I’d be patient and wait for her reply.

Or so I thought, but her reply came immediately.

When I checked the time on the message, it had arrived with the same timestamp as my outgoing one. It hadn’t even taken her a minute.

No way…

That meant she’d responded in less than sixty seconds.

I checked the message, assuming that it would be a brief reply, only to find an honest-to-goodness letter, beginning with a “Dear Araragi” and ending with a “Sincerely yours.”

Unbelievable.

I knew that girls were fast at texting, but…

I was reminded of the day of closing ceremonies, when she first entered her personal info into my phone. Hanekawa was a fairly fast typist then, but…

Wow.

Actually, though I didn’t know for sure because I really only ever sent them to my family, were text messages supposed to be this formal? Weren’t they more a tool for no-frills communication?

In any case, to summarize Hanekawa’s message, it said, “Wait there, I’ll be right over.”

Unable to summarize the situation well, I’d only been able to convey a rough outline of what had happened. But true to form, Hanekawa seemed to have figured out the entire situation.

Honestly.

If only Hanekawa had met Kissshot instead. “Rumors have a funny way of coming true,” was it? Hanekawa had spread a rumor about vampires─but in the end, I was the one who ended up encountering both her and Kissshot.

A thought suddenly came to me.

According to Hanekawa, rumors were going around the girls about Kissshot─could someone else entirely, neither me nor Hanekawa, but a girl who went to our school, or even another, have encountered Kissshot?

If someone had, what happened when they met?

Did they just pass each other by?

Or did the girl have her blood sucked─and her body eaten?

While it seemed like it would be huge news, if her body had been eaten with not a scrap of evidence left behind, then the talk may not have spread beyond her family and friends.

A journey of self-discovery. Running away from home lite.

Maybe that’s how people would see it. Maybe not if the number of victims began to pile up─but Kissshot didn’t seem to need that much “food,” perhaps owing to her elevated rank as a vampire…so it seemed within the realm of possibility.

“Oshino said about two weeks, didn’t he? Then maybe that means one person a month for Kissshot…so, including Guillotine Cutter, just two or three victims?”

Of course, it wasn’t a question of numbers.

But if true─it wouldn’t have surfaced.

“…What could it be? It feels like I’m still overlooking something…”

Overlooking something, or maybe forgetting to do something.

But now that I’d contacted Hanekawa, there shouldn’t have been anything left for me to do─and that was when.

Hanekawa showed up.

I heard someone knocking on the steel doors of the P.E. shed.

Clang, clang.

“I’m here to deliver a girl.”

“……”

Not funny.

She was trying to be considerate, but in the wrong way.

In any case, I took apart the barricade (both building it and taking it apart were easy for me, with my vampire strength) and told Hanekawa to slide in sideways while cracking open the door as little as possible. I pressed my body to the wall so that no sunlight would hit me as she entered. Judging by the time, it would be dark soon, but the late-afternoon sun was still probably out.

I’d be taking in sunlight sooner or later, though. Every inch of my body would be taking it in.

But that would be after I talked to Hanekawa.

As always, Hanekawa was wearing her school uniform. I wondered if showing me what she looked like in her street clothes just wasn’t on her to-do list… Or maybe she really didn’t want me to see her like that… Well, not that I care, mind you.

Hanekawa grinned with the same smile as always.

Was this her being considerate, too?

“I dunno about this…” On top of that, she began to speak to me from behind in an unusually high-strung voice as I barricaded the door once more. “I’ve gotten myself locked into a P.E. shed. What am I going to do if you tried something naughty?”

“…Naughty?”

Wait… How much of a pervert did she take me for? I admit, I may have shown her that side of me more than once, but I wasn’t the type who actually enjoyed that kind of talk.

If anything, I was a gentleman.

“Flashlight, on!”

She turned on her light and put it on top of a gymnastics vault. It was rectangular in shape, which kept it from rolling off. Then, Hanekawa sat down on top of a gym mat, while I sat directly in front of her.

“Oh my. There you go sitting right in front of me to sneak a look at my panties.”

“You’re getting who I am as a man all wrong,” I finally said, unable to take it any longer, while Hanekawa pulled on the hem of her skirt. “If a naked girl was in front of me, I’m the kind of guy who wouldn’t look at her if she said not to!”

“That’s normal.”

“Ulp!”

Seriously?

Since when had that become standard?

“No, Hanekawa, I don’t think you understand just how gentlemanic I am at heart.”

“Gentlemanly,” Hanekawa corrected. “But if that’s true, I can’t wait.”

“Can’t wait for what?”

“Won’t I be treated to oodles of your gentle behavior once the new school year starts?”

“……”

Wait a sec. How could she be so perceptive?

I didn’t so much as hint at it in my email─my plan was to hide it until the very end.

Because I knew that Hanekawa would try to stop me.

“So you can’t die on me.”

“…Hanekawa.”

“You can’t die,” she said.

She looked at me head-on in the dark.

“Those thoughts of yours are proof your heart is trying to run away from everything.”

“…You’re incredible.”

After taking time to digest her words, I replied with my unfiltered thoughts.

“You’re incredible. Seeing you─I feel so terribly lame. I probably would’ve died a lot sooner if I hadn’t met you. There were more than enough situations where I could have.”

“You’re not listening, I just said you can’t die─do you hear what I’m saying?”

“This is all my own doing,” I said. It almost felt like I was confessing. “We’re in this situation all because of how thoughtless I am─I hadn’t even considered that things could end up like this when I gave blood to Kissshot that day, you know? It would’ve taken nothing more than a moment of thought to realize what it meant to give my blood to a vampire, but I went and…”

It hadn’t even crossed my mind─that she ate people, that people would die because of her. I’d run away from those thoughts. Even after I’d given my blood to her, no matter how preoccupied I was about having become a vampire─I still had more than enough time to think about it.

No.

I’d said it myself at the very beginning.

To Hanekawa, on the day of closing ceremonies.

I was the one who’d spoken the words.

She’ll suck your blood─and kill you.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Guillotine Cutter had his blood sucked.

And then he was killed.

He died.

I should have known─but didn’t.

“Someone died because of me.”

“It’s not your fault, Araragi. Plus, for a vampire…for Miss Heartunderblade, it’s probably a very natural thing to do. It’s the same as when we eat cows or pigs─right?”

“……”

She’d die if she didn’t eat.

That’s what she told me.

“But─she even thought of you as my rations. You never counted to her─she never saw you as among our numbers.”

“But you were an exception for her, right?”

Saviors.

Each of us had saved the other’s life.

I saved Kissshot─

And Kissshot saved me.

Maybe ours was a relationship based on trust in that case. But still.

“She was just being good to me the way you or I might be to a smart cow… Well, maybe not a cow, but you know what I mean. Like one of those genius dogs, or a genius monkey.”

“You mean a pet?” suggested Hanekawa.

She was right.

And Oshino had said something like that too.

The kind of affection humans feel for their pets…

“But it must all be natural for her─including how she sees me.”

“Yeah. Which is why Kissshot isn’t to blame. It’s all my fault. I was in the wrong here─no one else.”

“I don’t think you were in the wrong, Araragi. All it takes is a shift in perspective for what’s right and what’s wrong to be flipped all the way around.”

“I agree.”

Oshino─had touched on that too.

We all define justice in our own ways.

That was why Oshino did what he did. He chose the middle ground─and stuck firmly to it.

“It seemed impossible to me at the time. Dramaturgy, Episode, Guillotine Cutter─those three were the human side of justice.”

“That’s because you were being a vampire then, Araragi. You couldn’t help it…but I guess it’s not that easy to rationalize.”

“Easy or hard, I can’t. I’ve become an enemy to humanity.”

“And that’s why you’re giving up on becoming human again?” Hanekawa’s tone wasn’t accusatory, but the question weighed heavily on me. “Have you given up on being human, Araragi? I thought you wanted to go back to being one─you said you wanted to return to reality.”

“But we ended up with a dead body. For me to have my wish granted at this point is just too selfish.”

“Speaking of selfish, isn’t that what you’re being now, Araragi?”

“Huh?”

Hanekawa touched her glasses as if to make sure they were in place and took a brief pause─before saying, “You’re trying to leave the big mess you made and run away from it all.”

“No…” That’s not it, I tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come out.

Hanekawa kept going.

“You’re running away emotionally, and you’re running away physically.”

“……”

“You’re trying to run away from here. Trying to reset everything all because you failed. Life doesn’t have a reset button─so you’re trying to pull the plug instead. No?”

“…No.”

No. I didn’t think so.

“It’s not that I want to run away, I want to take responsibility. The only way I can atone for it is to end my immortal life with my own hands.”

“That’s not atonement. You’d just be piling sin on top of sin,” Hanekawa said. “Suicide is a sin, you know.”

“What, Hanekawa… Are you one of those anti-suicide people?”

“I don’t have a firm stance on the matter either way, but we probably have the same opinion on that kind of thing.”

“The same opinion?”

“It feels awful when people die.” After letting that sink in, Hanekawa continued, “I don’t mind if I die─but it feels awful when people die.”

“……”

“No matter who that person is.”

“…You’re talking about Guillotine Cutter?” I began to think about him, though we’d only met a couple of times. “Some people ought to die─but people dying can’t ever not matter. That’s how I see it, and that’s how I define it. And from that perspective, I’m a person who ought to die.”

“But you’re not a person at the moment, are you?”

“Now you’re just nitpicking.”

“I’ll pick as many nits as I need to, if it’s for a friend.”

“Hanekawa.”

I realized there was no need to say what I wanted to say, and that even if I did say it, she’d have some retort, but─I still said it.

“True, I’m not human at the moment. I’m a vampire. And that means─just like Kissshot, I eat people.”

“……”

“I tried imagining it just now, but…just the thought makes me sick. I don’t want to live so badly that I’m willing to eat people.”

Which, I explained, is why I needed to die.

If I wasn’t turning back into a human, my only choice was death.

“Unlike you, I’m a weak person. If I don’t die now, I’m sure I’ll gradually slip─and some day, I won’t be able to resist my hunger.”

Rations.

Kissshot’s word.

“Hanekawa. Eventually, even I’m going to end up seeing you as nothing more than food.”

And that was what scared me.

Guillotine Cutter’s corpse was scary─but so was Kissshot’s comment about Hanekawa.

Her understanding of Hanekawa.

Her common sense would some day become my common sense, too.

Some day, the common sense I’d acquired as a human would leave me, and it would be replaced by a vampire’s common sense.

And when that happened, it seemed likely that I’d see Hanekawa merely as food.

I’d want to eat her.

“Then eat me.”

As if she had no desire to shoot me down, Hanekawa didn’t attempt a retort of the kind I’d expected─instead, in a composed tone, she said that.

“I think it’d be fine if you ate me.”

“…What? What are you even saying?”

It was an honest question. I didn’t know.

Not what her words meant, but how she felt.

“I wouldn’t call someone a friend if I wasn’t ready to die for them.”

“…Er.”

I knew people had their own definitions for everything, but this one went a little too far.

Who could keep up with such a definition of friendship?

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Hanekawa said with a smile. “I told you, if you got to know the real me, you’d feel disillusioned.”

“…Who exactly are you?”

“Hmm? Your friend, Araragi. At least, I’d like to think so.”

“Would a plain old friend go so far for someone like me? How are you able to do so much for my sake? What, are you the reincarnation of a cat I saved when I was in elementary school? Some inseparable childhood friend who moved away years ago? Are you a war buddy from my previous life?”

“Nope, not at all.”

“Didn’t think so.”

If you were wondering, I never saved a cat as a kid.

I didn’t have any friends who moved away, either.

My previous life I wasn’t so clear on, though.

“Like I said before─how are you able to do all this for me, someone you just met? If you went this far for everyone you knew, you could have all the lives you wanted and it still wouldn’t be enough.”

“Well, I don’t go this far for everyone I know,” Hanekawa said. “I’m doing this because it’s for you, okay?”

“I hope you know that however much you do for me, I’m still a minor. I can’t co-sign for you on anything, all right?”

“That certainly wasn’t my plan all along.”

“And I’ll probably be unemployed even as an adult, so I still wouldn’t be able to co-sign on anything for you.”

“Well, about that, I do hope you end up with a job.”

“Don’t actually be worrying that I might not!”

“Fine, then you worry.”

But at any rate, Hanekawa said.

“One life is all I need to save you, Araragi.”

“…So you’re saying that you dying doesn’t matter?”

“I don’t want to die, but you already saved my life twice─so I wouldn’t complain if you ate me, Araragi.”

Though she’d probably say that it hurt or something, Hanekawa said casually.

She hadn’t shot me down─but I didn’t have a reply for her.

She was amazing─she really was.

Honestly, she was so amazing that it didn’t make sense.

“So you can’t die,” Hanekawa repeated. “Don’t die.”

“…Then who’s going to take responsibility?” I couldn’t help but ask. “I was the one who revived Kissshot when she was on the brink of death─and I collected all of her limbs, then gave her back her heart, which she hadn’t even asked for. Who’s going to be responsible for that? Even if dying is a means of escape, how am I supposed to take responsibility without dying?”

“So you’ll be able to take responsibility if you do?”

“I don’t know, but…”

It was already all over. There was nothing that could be done─the situation was set. No one could stop Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade now that she had her full powers. It was my fault that she’d recovered─and I knew she was going to keep eating humans without so much as a second thought.

Just as she had done until now.

But from today on, it would be my fault.

“Guillotine Cutter couldn’t do it─in the time it took me to go shopping at the convenience store, she tore him to pieces and ate him as a snack. Dramaturgy and Episode have gone back home, but there’s no way they’d be any match for her. If I had to come up with someone, it’d be Oshino─but he would never do anything beyond striking a balance. He’s drawn a firm line─this business with Kiss- shot is over and done with in his mind. He’s not going to go and steal her heart on a whim again. No one can stop that vampire now.”

“Even you, Araragi?” Hanekawa said, cutting to the heart of the matter. “Wouldn’t you be able to stop her, Araragi? In fact─aren’t you the only one who can stop her now?”

Her words struck me almost entirely by surprise.

And─that’s what I had been overlooking.

“Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade…the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire, right? And you, Araragi, her one thrall─aren’t you actually the only one who can stop her?”

“…Oh.”

What I’d overlooked.

What I’d forgotten to do.

Absolutely. How had I missed something so simple? If neither Dramaturgy nor Episode nor Guillotine Cutter nor Oshino could do it─

Then I, who collected from them her right leg, her left leg, both of her arms, and her heart─I, Koyomi Araragi, had to do it.

I could just be the one to do it.

That─was taking responsibility.

Whether or not I could pull it off didn’t matter.

Right, I may have made a big mess of things.

But─I hadn’t done anything yet!

“I’m going to be the one to slay Kissshot,” I said aloud.

As I did, it began to feel real.

This was it.

It was something that only I could do.

The aberration slayer─I would stop her!

If that’s what I needed to do─then I had no choice but to!

Click.

It felt as if the gears had met and finally started to turn in my head.

“Your expression changed. Want to hear some good news on top of that, Araragi? Well, maybe it’s bad news,” Tsubasa Hanekawa lost no time to add.

“Huh? Which is it, good news or bad? Don’t be so vague.”

“It might be inconvenient for you right now, but it would’ve been convenient for you a little earlier.”

“Now I’m even more confused…”

“So, I went to the library yesterday and looked something up. When you beat Guillotine Cutter the night before last to finish collecting all of Kissshot’s parts…well, maybe you didn’t have her heart yet, but anyway, you were supposed to turn back into a human then, right? But─I felt a little anxious.”

“Anxious?”

“Would Miss Heartunderblade really turn you back into a human? I was anxious.”

It wasn’t that she doubted her, Hanekawa said, but…

“I was thinking about what would happen in the off-chance she didn’t turn you back into a human─so I did some research to see if there was any other way.”

In other words.

She’d looked up how a “formerly human” vampire made into a thrall by way of a vampire bite might turn back into a human being.

“…So, was there a way?”

Hanekawa nodded. “There was. But just one. It said that while servants are normally supposed to follow their master, if they actually caused the master harm, then the master-servant relationship would break down and they’d be stripped of their nature.”

“…? I don’t get it…”

“In other words, if you attack Miss Heartunderblade─you’ll be able to return to being human, regardless of how Miss Heartunderblade feels.”

“I see.”

First and foremost─I was surprised by such a simple rule.

“S-So that’s how it works.”

The master-servant relationship would break down.

It seemed to me that it had already broken down─but that would make it decisive.

I’d be able to return to being human. That’s what it meant.

“I found the same thing written in multiple books, so it seems like reliable information─I know it might be inconvenient for you now that you’re saying you don’t want to become human again and that you want to die, but I had to tell you. You’re the only one who can defeat Miss Heartunderblade, after all.”

“Yeah, that is inconvenient.”

Man. Always be prepared, huh? A cliché like “killing two birds with one stone” didn’t begin to describe how truly─

“How truly inconvenient this is─for me. It means that everything works out exactly as you want.”

“You might say I’m ‘fixing’ things. It’s a nasty trap, if I do say so myself.”

“You─know everything, don’t you?”

“Not everything. I just know what I know.”

So, Araragi, continued Hanekawa.

“You’ll just have to return to being human, yes? Given your current mindset, you can’t possibly let Miss Heartunderblade be.”

“I can’t possibly─”

“Or are you going to run away?” Hanekawa asked, delivering her final blow. “If you’re still going to say that you’re going to escape, then─I’m going to do everything I can to stop you.”

I’d rather…she spared me.

I’d still be responsible─my responsibility for bringing the situation about would remain, never to go away.

But.

What I could do─was settle it.

I could settle it.

And if I could, I needed to.

It was a far greater act of atonement than simply dying─mercifully dying─could ever be.

I looked at Hanekawa once more.

And I thought again─amazing.

My head had been full of thoughts of dying until moments ago. No matter how I rationalized it, all I could think of was how to punish myself. But a short little talk with Hanekawa, and before I knew it, I’d put those thoughts aside.

I couldn’t die until I’d spoken to Hanekawa─but now that I’d spoken to Hanekawa, I couldn’t die.

If I slew Kissshot and became human again─Hanekawa still wouldn’t let me die, no doubt. She’d use all of her powers of persuasion to keep me from doing it.

I’d made a bothersome friend.

And─I’d made a good friend.

“Then the question is whether or not I can beat her.”

I was the one vampire who approximated Kissshot─but our positions as master and servant seemed like a fatal distinction. If I wanted this act of rebellion to work, I’d have to do something out of the ordinary.

“That’s the thing. While I may have fixed things─there are a lot of gaps. If you were to lose, it would be the worst possible outcome, at least for me. Not only would you get your wish and die─Miss Heartunderblade would still be out there as an aberration… Miss Heartunderblade might even eat me. She did identify me as your rations, so she probably remembers my face at the very least.”

“Do you have any plans for dealing with the situation if that happens?”

“Huh? No, I haven’t thought it out that far,” Hanekawa said, shaking her head with a troubled expression. “What was she called again, a rare breed? Miss Heartunderblade doesn’t seem to fall under any traditional category of vampire. Just as you and Mister Oshino said, her immortality is so powerful that her weaknesses seem to stop being weaknesses.”

“Even if that’s basically true for me, too─the problem is the difference in our fight records…”

“And your mental preparation.”

“My mental preparation?”

“You spent all of spring break together with Miss Heartunderblade─so whether or not you can bring yourself to kill her is an issue here.”

“……”

She nursed me.

She sat by my side and cared for me.

She exposed her own body to the sun to save me as I was being fried by its rays.

And─she’d spared my life.

The life I’d tried to cast away and give to her.

She intentionally didn’t suck me dry. It was close to the kind of affection humans felt for their pets─

But still.

Despite the time we’d spent on top of the roof, for instance.

That time we spent laughing together, for instance.

“I’m mentally prepared,” I answered─even accounting for all that. “I’ll be able to slay her.”

“I see.”

Hanekawa nodded. There seemed to be something else on her mind, but it looked like she was leaving it unsaid.

“All right, then,” she said instead. “I’ll cooperate. I came up with this plan, so it’s my responsibility as well. Don’t hold back, let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“Don’t hold back, huh?”

“Ahaha, but I can’t think of anything more perverse than what I did the other day, m’kay?”

Perhaps to lighten the mood now that we were on the same page, Hanekawa laughed cheerfully─wait, hold on.

Please, she had me all wrong… Had she said that stuff at the outset to ease me into my decision?

Why was she offering to be cooperative in that kind of way?

If she wanted to help, she could help by coming up with some tactic. Honestly, what a silly thing to say to the gentleman known as Koyomi Araragi. Don’t hold back? Come on.

“Hanekawa.”

“Yes?” she replied.

As she tilted her head, I addressed her in an impeccably gentlemanly tone.

“Might you let me touch your breasts?”

“……”

Hanekawa’s expression froze in place on her still-tilted head. The fact that she was still able to keep smiling spoke volumes about her strength of character.

An oppressive mood began to fill the P.E. shed. Was this really the time to be making things awkward?

“Your breasts─”

“No, I heard you.”

Umm.

Hanekawa looked up, then down. Then she looked at me once again.

“Is that something you just have to do?”

“It’s something I have to do,” I said, trying to look as deadly serious as I could manage. “You haven’t seen Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade in her perfect form, have you.”

“Hm? No…but I’ve seen her at twelve and seventeen, so I think I can imagine what she looks like at twenty-seven.”

“It exceeds your imagination,” I said, holding up my index finger. “Her breasts exceed one’s imagination.”

“…Her breasts?”

“I fear that she might defeat me while I’m being distracted by those breasts. They will jiggle all over the place during battle. So to be ready for that, I want to train in the ‘way’ of girls’ breasts.”

“Ohhh,” I heard Hanekawa say. “That’s an even stupider reason than I expected…”

“B-But it does make sense, doesn’t it?”

“Mmf…”

Hanekawa shut her eyes and scowled, as if she was trying to withstand a pounding headache.

“I guess it’s fine.”

“Wha?! Really?!”

Why?

What about my argument actually convinced her?!

“Hold on a second,” she said.

Hanekawa began by untying her scarf. Then, taking off her uniform’s sweater, she untucked the hem of her blouse from her skirt. Just as I began to wonder what she was doing, she brought both of her hands behind her and stuck them underneath her blouse.

A few seconds passed.

And then.

Hanekawa pulled her now-undone bra out from under her blouse. She quickly folded it up with practiced motions before hiding it under the gym mat she sat on.

Then, she looked at me.

“Now, touch them,” she said.

“……!”

Hold on, I wasn’t asking her to go this far!

What was even going on here?!

I wasn’t prepared for this, emotionally!

Wh-What did she just undo?!

She didn’t have to undo anything!

“Wh-Whaaa?”

Plus, there was something else.

Upon taking off her sweater and undoing her bra, Hanekawa’s breasts seemed to grow bigger─was it some kind of optical illusion?

No. A vampire’s eyes couldn’t be deceived.

As Hanekawa was now, at least as far as I could observe from over her blouse, her breasts hardly paled in comparison to Kissshot’s and even rivaled them.

Not only that, they were so wonderfully shaped.

Now that she had taken off her bra, they should have been without support. But instead, they seemed to defy the laws of physics. Was Hanekawa ignoring the effects of gravity despite being a regular human?

Now this─this exceeded my imagination.

Of course, I’d made this request of Hanekawa precisely because I’d judged that she might be thus endowed. Even then, to call it “training” had been horribly rude.

Tsubasa Hanekawa.

Pound for pound, she could definitely stand up to Kissshot!

Who knew Hanekawa had such breasts!

B-But…

Hanekawa stood up and began walking in my direction (each step she took caused her chest to move in such an unimaginable way that my eyes were nailed to them, my body freezing in place like I was suffering a bout of sleep paralysis) before sitting down right in front of me─putting both arms to her sides, sitting up perfectly straight, and throwing out her chest.

This posture caused her breasts to look even larger.

Now this was drawing attention to your chest.

Not only that, her blouse was a fairly thin one, making clear what was just about the full, entire shape of her breasts.

“Araragi.”

“Huh? Er, yeah?”

“If you’re going to fondle them, do a proper job of it.”

“A-A proper job?”

“I think you ought to fondle them for at least sixty seconds.”

“S-Sixty seconds…”

Hold on, now.

She was setting the bar way too high.

Plus, somewhere along the line, “touching” had become “fondling.”

Oh no, I thought. I couldn’t say it was all a joke now…

What was I making my precious friend do?

“No holding back!”

“Y-Yeah!”

I reflexively held my hands up when I heard her words. But after that, I couldn’t move them any further.

After all, I did have a vampire’s grip, so I’d have to hold back when it came down to it. But I didn’t know how strong was strong enough. And to begin with, I didn’t know whether it was right to touch them from the top or from the bottom… There was the initial question of how to begin, but what came next? I didn’t even know what the follow-up question was.

They definitely wouldn’t fit in my hands…and so I hesitated to take a frontal approach.

I could just go from the side and bring them together─no, not that.

Agh, but there was a far more compelling issue.

“U-Um, Hanekawa?”

“Hm? What is it?”

“Would it be possible for you to turn around?” I said in a fleeting voice. “I don’t know if I can do this while I’m looking at your face.”

The shed was lit only by the flashlight, which may not have been enough for Hanekawa to get a good look at my face. But for a vampire, Hanekawa’s expression was as clear as day.

Her face was bright red, and she was biting her lip.

It was too much for me.

“……”

Hanekawa made a small, silent nod and spun around.

I could now see the base of her braid.

I had never looked at her hair that carefully before, but I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was… It seemed completely undamaged. I could see that she cared for it properly every day.

“Ack…”

I realized that it would still be difficult.

Now that Hanekawa had turned her back to me, my hands would have to make their way around her body. But in that case, her arms, stuck firmly to her sides, were kind of in the way…

“R-Raise both of your arms?”

“Are we doing stretches now?” Hanekawa asked as she raised them.

Now I had a clear path.

So then I passed my arms under hers─of course, this meant our bodies were now inches away from touching. Actually, now that Hanekawa was facing the other way, trying to touch her breasts would basically be the same as hugging her from behind…

Furthermore, this distance complicated things─should I be crossing my arms? No, it would be easier to feel where everything was if I did things normally.

I spread my fingers.

Hanekawa had barely moved an inch since sitting down─but even from behind, I could tell that she was nervous.

But of the two of us, I had to be the more nervous one.

I could feel my heart racing.

“Y-You’re not going to get mad at me later, are you?”

“Don’t worry. I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“…Okay, well, just in the off-chance that this ends up going to court, could you say something for me like, ‘Araragi, please, I beg you. Fondle my braless boobies’?”

Snap!

I thought I’d heard such a sound.

Was it one of Hanekawa’s veins bursting?

Or maybe it was one of the tensed muscles in her face.

“A-Ah, Araragi, p-please! I-I b-beg you! Fondle my braless boobies.”

“I can’t have you saying it in such a quiet voice. It’s almost like I’m forcing you to say it against your will. You need to say it louder. I want it to come from you, so tell me what you want me to do to you, and where.”

“Araragi! P-Please, I beg you, fondle my braless boobies!”

“…‘It’s a great honor to have my breasts fondled by you, Araragi.’”

“It’s a great honor…t-to have my breasts fondled by you, Araragi…”

“Okay… ‘I’ve worked hard to grow these lewd breasts all so that you could squish them one day, Araragi.’”

“I’ve worked hard to g-grow these l-lewd breasts, all so that you could…s-squish them one day, Araragi.’”

“Huh. You know, I never expected you to be this dirty.”

“…Y-Yes, I’m a very dirty girl. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, there’s no need to apologize. It’s not like you’re causing anyone any trouble by being dirty.”

“I-I guess you’re right, heheh!”

“So, how exactly are the breasts of our dirty yet hard-working class president lewd ones?”

“I-I take pride…in my belief that their s-size, and their s-softness…could not be any lewder!”

Oh.

Now I saw. I understood.

Like many adolescents, I, too, once struggled with the question of why I’d been born into this world. But now, at the age of seventeen, I was shown the answer.

Enlightened.

I was born for today.

My life existed for this moment in time.

The human known as Koyomi Araragi was born into this world solely in order to experience this day… No, it was bigger than that. It was wrong to speak of it on merely a personal level.

This world must have existed to this point so that I could experience this day.

The rest of history would be nothing more than an afterthought!

“Hold on, squeezing a friend’s boobs? That kind of thing just isn’t supposed to happen!”

I ran away from it.

I was the one who threw up my arms, who took three steps back and begged for mercy.

I was nearly prostrate.

“No, it doesn’t happen! This kind of thing shouldn’t happen!”

“…Chicken,” Hanekawa said in the deepest of voices.

She didn’t even turn to look at me.

She didn’t so much as attempt to look at me as I kneeled there nearly prostrate.

“Chicken. Chicken. Chickenchickenchickenchickenchicken.”

“Yes, I am a chicken. I am a loser. I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can say to you right now. Seriously, please forgive me. It was my fault. I got carried away. I let myself take advantage of your kindness, but it was your fearlessness that made me snap out of it.”

“You think that’s all it’s going to take? Do you have any idea what kind of determination it took for me to sit here like this?”

“N-No, a measly being such as myself could never begin to understand, but w-well, if I may entreat you to share with me the depths of your determination…”

“Honestly, I was convinced you were going to do more to me than just squish my breasts… Oh, I thought, so that’s how it’s going to be, my first time is going to be here, in a P.E. shed, on top of a gym mat.”

“Don’t you think you were being a little hasty in making up your mind?!”

“I actually figured it’d be okay.”

“You did?!”

I knew that girls tended to be better at making up their minds about these things when it came down to it, but…really?!

“And despite all of that, after you teased me and humiliated me, you didn’t lay a single finger on me!”

“A-And that’s why I’m apologizing.”

“So that’s all it takes, an apology. Huh. So that’s where I stand. I’m supposed to forgive you as long as you apologize. Huh.”

“I am so sincerely and honestly sorry about this. Please forgive me, my stylishly bespectacled class president!”

“…I’ve never been this insulted in my life.”

“Eeek!”

Did she mean the stuff about her breasts?

Or was it the stuff about her glasses?

Or could it have been the class president thing?

“Araragi…am I that unattractive to you?”

“………!”

Stop it, stop it, stop it!

Please, don’t torment me with that perfect of a line!

“B-But if I fondled your breasts like this, I’d probably regret it for the rest of my life!”

Though I might regret not fondling them too.

Still, I made my decision. If to fondle would be to feel lost, then better never to have fondled at all!

“W-Would it be acceptable if I were to touch your shoulders instead?”

“My shoulders?”

“Yes. Your shoulders. I’d like to rub your shoulders, Miss Hanekawa.”

“…Okay, we have a deal.”

We came to an agreement.

I rubbed Hanekawa’s shoulders.

Rub, squeeze, rub.

I was amazed. They weren’t even remotely stiff.

I’d heard that people with poor eyesight were more likely to get stiff shoulders, but…she really must have been a healthy one. In that case, getting a shoulder rub from someone with no talent for massages like me probably didn’t feel the least bit good…

Well, I could definitely say there wasn’t any meat to squeeze around her shoulders.

I could feel the shape of her bones─were those her collarbones?

Urk… In its own way, this wasn’t so bad.

Wait, no. Focus.

Rub, squeeze, rub.

And then, sixty seconds had passed.

“Th-That’s it. Thank you very much.”

Not only did I find myself rubbing her shoulders, I was even thanking her.

Talk about a slave mentality.

“You’ve had enough?” Hanekawa asked.

“Y-Yes. To be continued on our website.”

“I don’t see an online back rub feeling very nice.”

“Th-Then, to be continued in the new school year.”

“Yeah. That sounds good.”

Hanekawa nodded, shaking her braid in the process.

“So now that you’ve made a girl do this much for you…”

As I let go of her shoulders, Hanekawa stood and walked back to the mat she’d originally sat on. But instead of sitting, she turned to face me.

“You wouldn’t dare lose, would you?”

“I will win, Miss Hanekawa.”

It felt like if I didn’t go back to how I normally talked, I’d end up speaking politely to Hanekawa for the rest of my life.

But even so. I was able to say it clearly.

“I’m gonna win. I’m returning to you victorious. I’ll come again! I swear to you, on your chest!”

“No, it’s fine. You don’t need to do anything on my chest.”

There seemed to be a bit of a gap between how excited each of us were.

“Anyway,” Hanekawa said. Clearing her throat, she continued, “So this time is really going to be the final battle.”

“That’s right─the big finale of our superpowered school action story.”

And then, just as I said that.

From outside the P.E. shed─roared a thunderous noise.