Monogatari Series - Volume 7 - Chapter 1.04

004

Okay.

While I’ve brought up the topic enough times so far to give you little sniffs and nibbles of info, I think I should take the time here to talk about spring break in an easily digestible way.

As the person at fault for those two weeks, to be honest, I’m not very enthusiastic about the idea, but I’ve reached the unfortunate conclusion that I can’t avoid it if I want to talk about Golden Week.

Spring break.

I was attacked by a vampire.

In this day and age of real, working maglev trains, when school trips to foreign countries are nothing unusual, it’s embarrassing enough to make me want to go into hiding, but regardless, I was attacked by a vampire.

A vampire─the king of aberrations.

Freezes your blood, makes it boil.

An iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire.

An aberration slayer with a countless number of epithets.

A beautiful vampire with golden hair and eyes so bright they dazzled, so bright they blinded, chomped into my neck, sucked all the blood from my body─and turned me into a vampire.

Immortal. Unrivaled. The strongest of them all─a vampire.

And with neither vampire hunters, Christian special forces, nor kin-slaying vampires to save me─my spring break was consumed by a battle to become human again.

To spoil the whole thing for you, I was able to in the end with the help of a shabby geezer who was passing by and my class president.

How lucky.

How unlucky.

Though there were a few aftereffects.

I was able to turn back into something asymptotically close─to human.

And I lived happily ever after.

All’s well that ends well.

Of course, nothing in this world or in a life ends that simply, not to mention that we don’t get proper endings to begin with. But if I still had to pick an ending, I’d say that it had all ended for me the moment that beautiful demon bit me.

That aside.

Those “few aftereffects” I mentioned are why I needed to insert this story at this point. Vampiric aftereffects.

The most conspicuous is my ability to heal and recover─exactly like an immortal vampire in manga, anime, and other media they’re so popular in today.

For example, I could fall and skin my knee, suffer a paper cut, or get hurt in a scuffle with my little sister Karen, and while it would of course depend on my condition at that moment, on my degree of vampirism, I could probably heal in no time from that minor of an injury.

It would heal.

It would be fixed.

Literally inhuman recuperation─and in some situations, the ability worked on others.

I’m able to heal other people’s injuries.

Applying my blood, saliva, or whatever other fluid─a coat of it─could heal wounds. In other words, think of it like a decently strong Neosporin or Mentholatum.

Applying my saliva.

Licking someone─healed them.

And.

So.

That being the case.

“Thank you.”

Hanekawa expressed her gratitude once we were done.

She’d figured out my plan from the beginning, though.

I was going to heal the wound under her gauze but be subtle about it─so subtle as to sacrifice my favorability rating and act like my only goal was to satisfy my desire─but it was all completely obvious to her.

Since she’d probably turn down any offer of treatment, I’d thought to use her words against her, but she easily caught on to my scheme.

Shameful.

I wanted to dig a hole and die in it.

Hanekawa, for her part, must have entrusted herself to me despite seeing through my plan not because she wanted her injury healed, but more to help me save face.

Hrmm.

It felt sad to know how rigged the thing was from the start.

“You’d better put that gauze back on for now,” I said as if to hide my embarrassment. No, hiding my embarrassment was exactly what I was doing. “It’d seem weird if your wound healed all of a sudden. You need to at least pretend you’re hurt, or else─”

“My parents will be suspicious?” Hanekawa finished my thought for me. “They won’t,” she continued. “That’s not who they are. I could cut my hair short and I doubt they’d notice. They probably─don’t even remember my face.”

As one more note here, as a chicken without the guts to actually lick Hanekawa’s face, I’d taken the wholesome route of pricking my finger with a safety pin on my bag and spreading that blood on the area in question.

I was a long ways off from spreading my wings as a Nagoya cochin.

Of course, I was now a mockery of a vampire, and while I don’t know how it would have gone over spring break, my current bodily fluids weren’t enough to provide Hanekawa with a full and radical cure─but examining the result, I thought at least it wouldn’t leave a scar.

Looking at it the other way around.

If I hadn’t treated her─

It was ugly enough that she’d have been left with a clear scar.

I had to wonder how hard you needed to hit someone for them to end up that way.

It was grotesque.

It was disgusting.

Her father had pummeled his own daughter’s face─Hanekawa’s wording had made it sound like he’d hit her once, impulsively, but it was hard to imagine that being the case.

He must have beaten her over and over, persistently─relentlessly.

That’s what it looked like.

The “reason” Hanekawa had given for why she’d been hit was trivial no matter how you looked at it─however much she might have “mouthed off,” it hardly seemed to justify a father beating his daughter, or for that matter, an adult male beating a girl.

And yet.

When I asked her, “Do you want me to walk you home?”

She replied, “No, I’m fine.” A brisk─and unsparing refusal.

She really didn’t seem to want others meddling in her business─of course she didn’t.

It wasn’t like she had asked me for help.

I’d just happened to meet her on the street.

It was simple coincidence.

No, even if she’d asked me for help, it wasn’t like I could save her─because people.

People just go and get saved on their own─

Which is why.

Which is why we then walked together and carried on one of our silly conversations before casually, vaguely parting ways when it felt right. I want to say that at some point in between we buried a white cat that had been hit by a car, but I don’t really remember the details.

There you have it.

I had no choice but to make a major change in plans for the rest of my day─the dam construction was being canceled. I was in no mood to go to the bookstore. Getting on my bike as soon as we split up, I turned right around to go home.

“Oh. Koyomi? That was fast.”

When I returned, Karen was doing a handstand and climbing up and down the stairs─what the heck was she up to? What kind of workout was that?

“……”

But I passed by her, not even in the mood to quip, and headed to the bathroom to wash my hands.

“Hey, what’s your problem, Koyomi? Don’t ignore your cute little sister, at least say hello on your way in. You finish shopping?”

“Shopping? Oh, well…”

I hadn’t gone shopping.

Not only was my frustration unrelieved, I was even more pent up than before.

My feelings, my thoughts, only weighed heavier─