Monogatari Series - Volume 7 - Chapter 1.05

005

The next day.

April thirtieth, in other words.

Still, it felt more like the night of the twenty-ninth (it’s not a new day to me until my little sisters wake me up)─and around the time my parents went to bed, as did Karen and Tsukihi, up late because it was a holiday, I snuck out of the house. Straddling my mountain bike, careful to make as little noise as possible, I stealthily inched its pedals forward. Even I had to admit that I was going overboard by not turning on my light for a while.

Out to have some fun at night?

No, that wasn’t it.

I’m not brave or resourceful enough for that─while I may have the grades of a washout, I am, in spite of myself, a fairly serious high school boy.

It hurts me to be treated as a delinquent.

So, you ask, where was I fighting through my drowsiness to go to? Some ruins on the edge of town, an abandoned building they say was once a cram school. It was so close to crumbling that kids wouldn’t even dare each other to enter it, a building that looked only like the remains of something─though I’m sure it wouldn’t make a good impression on anyone that I was heading to such a place in the middle of the night.

You could call it an act of delinquency, and I’d have no room to argue.

But I did have a reason.

A reason for heading there, of all places─and in the middle of the night.

A firm reason.

I stopped my bike in front of the fence encircling the ruins, and while there was obviously no need to, considering the complete lack of any other human presence, I put my chain lock around the rear wheel. Just to be sure, but more likely out of sheer habit. I then entered onto the grounds through a hole in the fence and went inside the building.

I know I said that kids didn’t dare each other to, but breaking into it at night, regardless of how at home I’d made myself there, sent a bit of a shiver down my spine─in particular.

Because there was a real ghost inside, in particular.

A ghost.

A yokai.

An aberration─the king of aberrations.

A vampire.

A nightwalker.

“Then again, I guess that’s in the past─”

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away.

Yes.

It wasn’t a vampire in here─but the vestiges of one.

A husk of a vampire─the dregs of a vampire.

Because she was a little girl who was a mockery of a vampire.

The building was in even worse shape inside than it looked on the outside, and, dodging rubble and trash the whole way, I used the stairs to head straight to its fourth and highest floor.

There were three rooms on the floor─all once used as classrooms─and I began turning their doorknobs with proximity as my only priority.

It seemed I had bad luck that day.

Both the first door and the second left me empty-handed.

Not that a prize was waiting for me behind the third─because while the little girl who was a mockery of a vampire was there, someone else, a man who should’ve been, wasn’t.

“Huh… Dammit, Oshino. Where’d you go at this hour?”

Was he out?

His behavior was always opaque─but it was so late. Maybe he was dozing away on one of the lower floors with some old desks as his bed. Maybe he’d predicted my arrival and avoided the fourth-floor classrooms so his sleep wouldn’t be disturbed. I hadn’t given him the exact date and time of my visit, but he always acted like he saw straight through people─so maybe he’d seen me coming.

I admit, I was an unwelcome guest in that regard. No one with any sense would make a visit in the middle of the night. If anyone was in the wrong here, it was me for expecting him to be waiting with the usual you’re late, Araragi.

Dealing with a vampire, which was hardly common sense, caused your own actions to start lacking common sense. That made perfect sense─but.

Closing the door behind me, I looked at the young girl, the former vampire, sitting in one corner of a pitch-black room─and gulped.

I was totally nervous.

Now that I thought about it.

This was my first time alone with her since spring break─with not another human present.

Oshino was around every other time I’d met her here like this─and while I said “not another human,” she was certainly not human, and neither was I.

A half-assed aberration─and a half-assed human.

And the responsibility for the two of us being this way─fell mostly on my shoulders.

No wonder I felt nervous.

And tense.

And guilt─began to bloom.

To moé.

“……”

Just so we’re clear, that’s moé in the original sense of “sprout,” and in no way was I taken by the cuteness of the lightly dressed blond girl.

Even if she was sitting there looking like a cherubic eight-year-old.

Even if she had voluminous yet delicate blond hair, each strand like a thread of fine silk.

Even if she wore an adorable dress─even if she had slender, bare feet so pale you could nearly see through them and that you’d never imagine walking around these ruins.

There was nothing cute about her.

I don’t need to expand on this point. It’s self-evident.

All you needed to see were her eyes as they glared daggers of resentment straight through me.

“Stop with those eyes. It’s such a waste of your beauty,” I joked as I approached her─carefully, one step at a time. “Come on, try giving me a smile. You look your best with a smile on your face.”

No reply.

It’s not like she was a plain old corpse─well, maybe she was like a corpse.

I hadn’t spoken expecting a reply, either. She’d uttered nary a word since the end of spring break. Even I wasn’t so self-centered to think she’d pipe up now all of a sudden, at this point in time.

Just.

If I let myself fall silent too─my heart might break. Prattling on, at least for my part, was all I could do.

Especially with Oshino out today.

But─all of that aside, it was the honest truth that I thought she looked her best when she smiled.

As she sat in the classroom corner with her arms wrapped around her legs, ready to be assimilated into the mold on the walls, I plopped down on the floor in front of her and undid my shirt.

…Another clarification. While I suddenly did start stripping in face of a lightly layered blond girl, I wasn’t planning on launching into my best Lupin III impression or anything.

Novel or not, you couldn’t publish that.

Not everyone would accept the excuse that she’s technically not a little girl but an aberration and in fact five hundred years old.

The reason I was topless in these ruins regardless of it being the end of April, when it was still cold out─was to feed her.

Feed her?

What does taking off my clothes have to do with that?

Was I going to serve her sushi on a nude body, on my male form?

I can already hear you asking these questions, but I shouldn’t have to explain (actually, anyone who wondered that last question has some pressing issues).

It goes without saying.

A bloodsucker feeds─by sucking blood.

“You could at least say grace, you know. The feeding itself is going to be a breach of etiquette whatever we do.”

I put my arms around her small physique and lifted her bodily to guide her mouth to my neck─it was like we were embracing, a position that I just couldn’t get used to.

Food. Blood sucking.

Then again, she wouldn’t call this a meal. Maybe it was straightforward intravenous nourishment─because at this point in time, she’d even lost her natural ability to suck blood.

Mèmè Oshino, an authority on aberrations, had modified her constitution to accept only my blood─the flip side was that if she didn’t ingest my blood regularly, she’d die in no time, vanish in no time. She was that fragile of a being now.

As far as her soul goes, Araragi, she’s almost your slave, Oshino had told me.

But no, being the one who continues to give her blood, I think it’s me who’s the slave.

I’m the one in her service.

My servant.

She used to call me that haughtily, arrogantly─recalling those times and seeing her feeble state made my chest ache.

Every time she sucked my blood.

Not my neck, punctured by incisors that bore just a faint hint of her vampiric legacy─but my chest.

My heart hurt.

Throbbed with pain.

Heartthrob.

But each time, precisely for the same reason─the pain brought me relief.

Because if she was consuming my blood─then she was trying to stay alive, at least.

This vampire, who once even attempted suicide.

This vampire, dead from the start.

She was trying to live, and for my sake─

“Hm?”

Even as I say that.

I realized she wasn’t biting my neck, not today. We were in an embrace─she was putting all of her weight on me and wrapping not just her thin arms but her sticks for legs around my body, so that our torsos were glued like we were koalas or something─and yet she wasn’t biting.

“…?”

I couldn’t figure out what she was up to.

Was she refusing my blood and giving up on living after all? I shuddered at the possibility and held her close without thinking, nearly breaking her back─but that wasn’t it.

I was wrong.

When I looked at her─when I followed the vampire-girl’s gaze.

It wasn’t my neck she was staring at.

Rather, it was at a package I’d placed on the side in order to hold her.

A package that emitted a sweet scent.

“Umm…”

It was a gift I’d brought for this abandoned building’s resident free spirit, Mèmè Oshino, a vagabond whose life was anything but abundant, really just some refreshments.

It was an assortment from Mister Donut.

Ten I’d bought at the store for a thousand yen.

A golden chocolate, a French cruller, an angel French, a strawberry whipped French, a honey churro, a coconut cruller, a Pon de Ring, a D-pop, a double chocolate, and a coconut chocolate.

Of course it smelled sweet.

I’d originally bought them as a present for my sisters on the way back from meeting Hanekawa.

Both Karen and Tsukihi, however, had spouted nonsense about being on a diet and let their big brother’s kindness go to waste.

I’d responded that growing girls shouldn’t be going on diets and needed to get nice and fluffy, which led to an argument so fierce it may have permanently damaged our relationship. Since I’d bought the assortment with money I’d borrowed from Tsukihi in the first place, I never had much of a chance.

It ended with me being forced to apologize.

What an outrageous sibling dynamic.

Still, ten was too many donuts for one person to eat alone, not to mention that donuts are notoriously quick to go stale, which is why I had no choice but to bring them to Oshino, who I assumed was not just in dire need of his daily bread but yesterday’s as well.

He was just barely staving off the elements by living in this abandoned building, or rather, he might have been sustaining himself off the elements. Even I had enough compassion in me to want to treat him to something sweet for a change.

……

Of course, it’s not lost on me that preening about a simple thousand-yen donut set is odd when I still owed a large debt, five million yen to be exact, to the man over what happened during spring break.

Five million.

That’s the kind of money that adults hang themselves over.

I didn’t have the first idea about how to pay him back and didn’t even feel like thinking about it.

Was I supposed to sell my organs or something?

Using my immortality to produce whole new batches of them?

“Scary shit.”

So.

That aside─the girl vampire in my embrace ignored me entirely to give her undivided attention to the fragrant assortment of donuts that owed its presence to the aforementioned chain of events.

There was fire in her eyes.

Passion in the way she looked at them.

“Hold on… No way.”

There was no way.

How could that be the case?

She may have been a husk, yes. She may have been dregs, yes.

While most of her nature had been stolen from her─though she’d been stripped of her figure, her form, and even her name, she was still a proud vampire.

No plain vampire, either.

An iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire, one of noble blood.

A thoroughbred among vampires.

Her?

How could she have blood, her staple food, right under her nose and still be more interested in donuts, of all things…

Shlurp.

I heard a sound.

I looked at her and saw drool coming from her mouth.

“You’re ruining people’s dreams!”

Yelling, I tossed her away.

The little girl flew into the wall behind her, hit her head, and lay still.

Oh no. I hadn’t meant for my react to be so violent. The disgusting feeling of her drool dripping straight onto my exposed shoulder was partly to blame.

But that wouldn’t cast me in the best light, either, when I’d schemed and failed to slather my saliva all over not just any patch of skin but Hanekawa’s face.

“A-Are you okay?”

It seemed like she’d taken a hard hit, and as she rubbed her head, I offered a hand but she swatted it away.

She seemed to be upset.

Her blond hair was standing a bit on end.

…Like she was an animal or something.

Like an unsociable cat who wouldn’t let you touch her.

I couldn’t have her mad at me─her body wouldn’t go for much longer unless she refueled, with blood. I hadn’t been able to come to this abandoned building for a while because of how agitated I’d been. You could say that the root of the problem was that I’d mistaken my agitation for infatuation, but that was all cleared up now thanks to Tsukihi. I wanted to give my blood tonight to make up for wasted time.

It wasn’t easy to sneak out at night under my sisters’ watch─but since vampires are nocturnal and daylight hours are usually sleepy-time, the deed wasn’t any easier while the sun was up.

No creature likes to be roused, so dispensing these meals could be a hassle.

In the end, there was no better time for drinking blood than the middle of the night.

…It really was like dealing with an animal.

Or a baby.

Was this how nursing mothers felt?

Okay, now what─I thought with arms crossed.

I would ask Oshino, if he was there, but he wasn’t. And this wasn’t so big that I’d wake him up over it if he was just sleeping in another classroom. He might go so far as to ask for an advisory fee and demand to be paid. I wasn’t taking on any more debt.

And anyway.

I’d decided to be responsible for this vampire for the rest of my life.

What was I going to do if I couldn’t resolve something this minor on my own?

“Am I just supposed to pat her on the head? No, that was a sign of submission…”

Hmm.

Oh, right.

This had all started over Mister Donut, so as simple as it seemed, maybe I needed to resolve this through Mister Donut too.

Right, food solved all disputes.

Like in Oishinbo.

Hahaha, how can I stay mad at you after what you’ve shown me with this food, or something.

Removing the box from the plastic takeaway bag, I placed it on my lap and opened it slowly so that the girl vampire could see.

I then grabbed one donut, a golden chocolate at the edge, and offered it to her with an outstretched arm.

I offered it.

As soon as I did, she took it from me.

With such incredible speed that it made me wonder if she hadn’t lost one bit of her vampire skills, she took it.

Then, without taking a moment to inspect it, she munched on it.

This too was done at an incredible speed, and the golden chocolate disappeared in about three bites. The way she ate, I was afraid she’d gobble down her own fingers in the process.

Wait, wait, wait!

How badly did she crave these things?

It bears repeating that she never seemed to relish even my blood this much─I felt a bit hurt.

“─Whoa, hey!”

As soon as she’d finished, the girl vampire aimed straight for the other nine donuts that sat exposed on my lap.

I just barely managed, box and all, to evade her.

The way she pounced at me, I’m not kidding when I say that my abdomen might have ended up with a hole in it as collateral damage.

As she prepared for her next attack, I couldn’t help yelling at her.

“Sit!”

I yelled at her, but “Sit”?

She wasn’t a dog.

But the vampire faithfully did as she was told and sat in place─not slumped over with her arms wrapped around her legs in her usual manner, but with training-perfect posture, crouched with her hips half off the ground.

She stared at me with sharp eyes and a serious expression.

“……”

Though I didn’t understand what was going on, I thought that I still needed to do something to break this stalemate. As a test, I took the French cruller, my personal recommendation out of the nine remaining donuts, and made a gentle offering to her.

I was afraid that handing it to her directly might cause my hand to be eaten off my arm after what had just happened with the golden chocolate, so it was more like I placed it in front of the sitting vampire.

It goes without saying that the floor of a ruined cram school is by no means a clean surface (though the vampire went barefoot, Oshino and I walked around in shoes), so I also made sure to place the donut on top of one of the paper napkins found inside the box.

I thought she’d leap right at it, but the girl vampire only drooled and maintained her stance.

Though she did glare at me with literally demonic eyes.

The way she stared up into mine made the way she’d looked at me earlier feel like a smile.

If looks could kill, I’d already be dead.

Then again, I’ve heard that certain lineages of vampires really can kill people with a single gaze.

Evil eyes, or demon eyes, or something.

Come to think of it, over spring break, didn’t she simply glare at a concrete wall to smash it? Was my life in danger?

“…Shake hands.”

I figured I’d try.

I held out my hand.

The vampire put her palm straight onto mine. It felt like a scene out of E.T., but she did it with all the force of a slugger’s high five, perhaps as a small act of retaliation.

“Um, okay… You can ea─”

In the game of hyakunin isshu, the players listen to a poem being recited, then race to be the first to take the corresponding card out of the many laid out.

The kimari-ji is the syllable that makes it clear which poem is being read. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that good hearing, which lets you move the moment the key bit is pronounced, separates the game’s winners from its losers─I’m sad to report that I don’t know very much about the game, but if the above is true, I’d have to admit that the vampire before me had what it took to be a very good player.

She’d moved before I was done saying “eat”─no, she’d finished moving.

She was sinking her fangs into the French cruller like she was some sort of wild beast.

Well, maybe not a wild beast.

She looked just like a pet dog.

The sight of an eight-or-so-year-old blond child stuffing her cheeks with a French cruller along with the napkin, on all fours as if she were licking the floor, teetered on many edges.

Along with the napkin… It felt like I’d made the right choice not handing it to her after all.

That said, even she seemed unable to digest a paper napkin, and the girl vampire dexterously separated it from the rest inside her mouth and spit it back out.

You couldn’t call it the best show of manners.

Then again, you couldn’t call it the best show of manners from the moment she was eating a donut while on all fours.

Well─during spring break too, she never had great manners when she ate. When I think back to what she told me then, it seemed like vampires and humans had different ideas of dining etiquette in the first place.

What was it she told me back then? That it’s bad manners to stare at someone while they’re eating? But the powerful glare she now sent my way had nothing to do with any broken rules of etiquette. It could only mean that she was aiming for the eight remaining donuts.

“Wait, but I brought these for Oshino─”

To begin with, no matter how much she enjoyed the donuts, they wouldn’t serve as nutrition for a vampire. Because nutrition for this girl─the only healthy, balanced meal for her─was my blood.

“─But I guess you could have three more.”

I’d brought ten.

Splitting them between her and Oshino came out to five each─and when I thought about it, Oshino would have just as hard a time as me eating ten donuts on his own.

“Okay, which do you want? Pick three.”

I showed the girl the inside of the box.

“You only need to point.”

Then, with a finger on her left hand─she started at the edge and pointed at every single donut, one by one.

Each one, from edge to edge.

“……”

All of them?

So greedy.

The vampire seemed unwilling to compromise, and once again, with the same sour look, she pointed with care from edge to edge at every single one.

She was so meticulous that she made sure to point at each of the D-pop sestet.

“Hmm.”

So she had a sweet tooth… But still, all of them? How could her little body absorb all that sweetness?

The girl vampire stared intently at me as I wavered─I could feel the pressure coming from her. The same kind of pressure that broke concrete walls.

Seriously, I felt like I was about to be crushed.

Of course─it could have been my guilt that felt so crushing. It was my fault that she was forced to live this kind of life, at the end of the day. It hurt my heart to face the fact that a once proud, noble, and beautiful vampire was crawling around on the floor to eat donuts.

She who hadn’t spoken a word to me since spring break.

Despite all the laughing she used to do, her face was now a dour, depressed mask.

Considering all she did, all she had done, natural feelings of pity─the natural pity any human should feel weren’t deserved. I knew that, but.

“Okay, fine. You can have all of them,” I said.

Generously and genially, I placed the entire box on the floor.

Almost like it was an offering.

“So spin around three times and say woof.”

Oops.

Man, I got caught up in the moment and asked her to perform a trick─but even as I thought so, and before I could take back my command, she spun like a top and landed a clean triple axel.

More like a dog than a top.

That she didn’t bark at the end, instead turning her head to the side with an upset look, might have been her last shred of pride as an ex-noble─but yeah, it was kind of late in the day for her pride to be showing.

Hmph.

It still looked like she wasn’t going to talk.

I thought she might get carried away and blurt out something, but I was being too optimistic.

Though even I’d feel let down if she’d chosen this comedic scene to speak at long last.

What kind of person would come up with a story-ruining twist like that?

I slid the box of donuts over and told her to eat. Then, like she’d been waiting, the vampire got back on all fours and began cramming all the donuts in her mouth, jumbling them together, box and all.

Her appetite was making her forget herself, and I worried that she might start eating the floor.

She was more malnourished child than dog.

“For reals? These halo-shaped treats are so delish. ’Tis nothing short of a chest of gemstones holding the sweetest of rings.”

“Did you just talk?!”

I’d happened to look to the side but snapped my head back toward her in surprise. But the vampire, her expression as close to blank as an expression could be, casually went on devouring the floor─I mean, the donuts.

Ah, I was just hearing things…

Yikes, it made my heart skip a beat.

I thought all the drama had been ruined.

Really, what a nasty and unfair surprise.

“Hmm…well, I guess knowing her favorite food is…at least something.”

Learning that she had a food she liked so much it made me hear things was an important piece of info for maintaining my relationship with her going forward.

But.

Even then─she wouldn’t talk to me.

I wished she would so much it was making me hear things─but she stubbornly refused to speak to me.

Even though we were once master and servant, temporary as that may have been.

“Phew. It’s not like you can’t speak properly because your throat and tongue are an eight-year-old’s─”

Actually, I’d never thought of that before, but maybe that was it.

But even if it was, I wished she’d talk, if only in broken sentences.

Like Sue from Genshiken.

Like Sue from Genshiken.

Like Sue from Genshiken!

“What’re you doing, Wet’n’soggy?”

And then.

I leapt to my feet at the sudden voice behind me like I’d been doused with a bucket of cold water.

I turned around to find Oshino there.

I’d heard no footsteps and had sensed no presence.

“You scare me in your own way, you know…” I said with a sigh of relief. I was of course used to this place, I’d even made it my abode for a time. But it was still an abandoned building─I’m going to be scared if someone shows up behind me out of the blue in this situation. “Don’t just pop up like that. Just because your name has the character for ‘stealth’ in it, you think you can sneak up on people?”

“Hmph. What about you, Wet’n’soggy? However much of a grudge you hold over what happened during spring break, you shouldn’t abuse our li’l vampire like that.”

“I’m not abusing her.”

“I believe treating a young girl like a dog more than qualifies as abuse, Wet’n’soggy.”

Good grief, Oshino exhaled with an exaggerated shrug.

“My guess,” he continued, “would be that you brought those donuts as a gift for me─oh dear, I missed my chance to eat some.”

“……”

He grinned as he spoke in the same tone as always, like he saw through everything.

And he could stop calling me Wet’n’soggy.

It just felt like a different character’s schtick, for some reason.

He was sabotaging future material.

But that aside─Mèmè Oshino.

An old dude in his thirties.

Had made his appearance.

A visibly frivolous, delinquent middle-aged guy who wore Hawaiian shirts year-round. An expert on aberrations, an authority on yokai apparitions, a ghoul and goblin technocrat─those were his titles, and he had the shady vibes to match.

I’ve heard mysterious info along the lines of him being made to look and sound really cool in the anime, but who cares.

He looked like a suspicious dude to me no matter what.

You could say a bizarre dude.

“I may not have told you, Araragi, but I love sweets─if there’s ever another opportunity like this one, please do save some for me. Old-fashioneds are my favorite. The name matches my personality, you see.”

“Oh, shut it. There’s nothing old-fashioned about you.”

There’s nothing more annoying than adults who try to cast how out of touch they are in some kind of classical light─though I do agree that those old-fashioned donuts are tasty.

When I looked over at the girl vampire, she’d finished eating both the old fashioned and the Pon de Ring and was back in her usual spot in the corner of the classroom, in her usual pose with her arms wrapped around her legs, with an expression that said, “What? Excuse me? Mister Donut? I’ve never heard of him.”

If anyone here was acting a certain way because of what happened over spring break, it was her─she seemed to want to avoid looking disgraceful to Oshino.

Despite her best efforts, though, she couldn’t hide the mess around her lips.

But, well.

Not that he was anyone I should be comparing myself to, but at the very least, she seemed to have more feelings for me than Oshino─that little fact brought me relief.

…Of course, it could have just been that she didn’t care about me at all.

“Fine,” I promised, “next time I’ll get a box of old-fashioneds─I think I’m about to hit a good number of Mister Donut points, too. So, Oshino. Where were you this late at night?” Judging by his demeanor, he hadn’t been sleeping in another classroom.

“Eh. Work, you know.” Oshino put on no airs as he replied, but he did sound like he was, as ever, playing dumb. “The reason a rolling stone like myself has decided to stay in this town, and the reason I even came to this town in the first place, is to collect stories of aberrations─but of course, my most important job now is to deal with the aftermath of what you did.”

“The aftermath?” I glanced over to the squatting vampire, who already seemed uninterested in our conversation. “You mean taking care of her like this?”

“That’s part of it, but it’s not everything─vampires are actually quite annoying to deal with, you see. They’re the king of aberrations, after all─and so their mere presence can cause all sorts of phenomena. They constantly stimulate and influence everything around them. The job I’ve taken off of your hands is to handle all of that in a tidy way.”

“So a lot of different jobs at once? Almost like Boogiepop or something. You must be happy, sounds like business is booming.”

Then again, if you put my five million yen aside, all that aberration story collecting or whatever didn’t sound like any kind of “job” that brought in money.

“Things aren’t going Boogiepop well for me, unfortunately─my brain isn’t built in a way that lets me think about multiple things at once. By the way,” Oshino went on, “going back to what we were talking about earlier─don’t bully our vampire too much. You’re just going to make problems for yourself in the future.”

“Like I said, I’m not bullying her.”

I did feel a bit like my joking around had gone too far, but she’d done most of it herself. I won’t claim to be an innocent bystander caught up in it all, but she’d taken me along on a ride, pretty much.

I asked Oshino, “Actually, I’d been wondering ever since spring break, but did she get, like, mentally younger, too?”

While her body now appeared to be that of an eight-year-old, she used to look like a dignified young lady─no matter how tugged along vampires were by their appearance, her fundamental age still had to be five hundred.

Even eight-year-olds don’t eat like dogs, anyway.

“Well, Araragi, what’s she supposed to do? It’s not just vampires. All aberrations are made up of human beliefs.”

“Human beliefs?”

“Yup. They’re there because humans think they are─that’s what an aberration is. Behind every ghost is a silver tongue. But that doesn’t make them any less real.”

“Huh? I’m not sure I get your point. I guess faith works in mysterious ways, but how does that have anything to do with her?”

“Vampires are the strongest aberration because everyone believes that vampires are the strongest aberration. Aberrations manifest as those around them recognize them─and behave as those around them expect them to.”

That’s how it goes, Oshino added.

He cast a glance at the vampire. Even if looks could kill, this was a soft one, with no pressure or anything else behind it, and wouldn’t kill an insect.

“As for our li’l vampire─Araragi, you are currently the only person who recognizes her.”

“……”

“Missy class president and I do too, strictly speaking, but it’s still you who has the greatest influence on her. You are her one and only source of nutrition, after all. That’s a super direct influence.”

“So─you’re saying she looks this way now because that’s what I think?”

No.

I could accept that my influence was making her like Mister Donut, but eating like a dog… If that was the kind of behavior I expected from a vampire, I had some pretty bad issues I needed to work out. I seriously required some counseling. It was still the dead of night, but I should pick up a phone and make an appointment right now.

“I might be immature compared to you or Hanekawa and do see her as an eight-year-old in some ways─but this can’t be what I expect of her,” I objected.

“A child doesn’t always turn out the way his parents want him to. Still, he’s influenced by his parents’ expectations─it’s kind of like that.”

“His parents’…expectations.” Influenced─by your home environment.

“I’m not going to give you some tired old talk about needing to become an honest citizen, but if you keep on messing around, you might end up not just having an influence on her, but a bad one. Especially given.”

Oshino stopped there.

And he didn’t continue.

A pause in the conversation out of consideration for me─this probably was not. Oshino wasn’t so considerate. He simply didn’t have to say it, which is why he didn’t─and really, I didn’t have to hear it.

Especially given.

Especially given how that proud vampire was reduced to an innocent little child─why pile on a bad influence?

That’s what he meant.

But I had to agree with Oshino in part─even if they don’t turn out the way you want them to, this vampire had met one of my expectations, at least.

That is─she didn’t forgive me.

She neither laughed nor spoke.

The vampire─didn’t forgive me.

Just as I didn’t forgive the vampire.

“So, Araragi. If you’re feeding her donuts, does that mean you’re all done with your vampire duty today?”

“Vampire duty…” I wasn’t doing chores. “Not yet. How rare of you to guess wrong. Donuts first, blood sucking next. She seems to like them better than my blood. I’m in the middle of being grief-stricken over the fact.”

“Huh. Well, your blood doesn’t seem like it’d be very sweet. I think I can sympathize with her.”

Yes, yes, Oshino nodded to himself.

The bastard, acting so convinced.

“By the way, Araragi. She came up for a brief second just now, but how is missy class president doing?”

“Huh?”

Really? That was a sudden question.

He asked it almost as though he knew I’d run into Hanekawa in the afternoon, but maybe it was just that all-knowing tone of his─and yet once I thought about it some more, that wasn’t it.

Upon reconsideration, Oshino always seemed to be oddly concerned about Hanekawa.

He asked me about her every opportunity he got.

Actually, I wouldn’t say he was concerned about Hanekawa─more like, concerned about her doings.

That made more sense.

Oshino seemed awfully wary of Hanekawa thanks to spring break─putting aside whether his wariness was genuine, from his point of view someone like her had to seem like a handful.

“That girl would be a handful whoever you are,” Oshino gently corrected my unspoken impression. That’s what I mean by his all-knowing tone. “Even for you, of course─while our li’l vampire’s arrival really warped the aberration situation in this town, by that token, missy class president’s presence is warping the human situation in this town significantly.”

“We both know that’s an exaggeration.”

“An exaggeration is just enough when we’re talking about her. You have to be audacious and bombastic. Truly, with that girl.”

So how’s she doing? he asked.

“What do you mean, how? Fine. She’s well.”

“Really?”

God, he was persistent.

No, if he was being persistent, that was because he was suspicious of my dismissive reaction (or my attempt to get off the topic.)

If he was going to ask me really, then the answer was no, not really.

It was really a lie.

But we were talking about Hanekawa’s home environment. It didn’t seem right for me to air it out where I was.

The story of the gauze on her left cheek─and the story behind it, too.

I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone.

Even Oshino.

“Hm, I see. So you can’t tell.”

But, and perhaps you could say as always, Oshino needed only my momentary pause over whether or not to reply to figure out my predicament.

“Which means─it’s fair to assume that something unspeakable has happened to her? That’s worrying.”

“It’s nothing you need to be worrying about.” Of course, nor was it something─I needed to be worrying about. “It’s Hanekawa’s problem, nothing we should butt into. No matter what happens, she’s just going to go and save herself─that’s the only way, right?”

“Hmph. Okay, then I won’t press you.” I’d been sure he meant to hound me for more the way things were progressing, but he backed off without a fight. “It isn’t my place to comment on how you and missy class president are flirting with each other, anyway.”

“Hold on, we aren’t flirting─”

“Flip her skirt or whatever, it isn’t my place to comment.”

“What do you know?!”

“Why don’t we take the opposite approach,” Oshino ignored my attempt to excuse myself. “Tell me everything aside from what you can’t tell me. It’s not as if you can’t say a thing about her, right?”

“……”

Well, he was right─I couldn’t just keep mum if he went with that approach.

While I ought to stay away from everything about her household situation and how her father had hit her─it wasn’t as if I needed to hide everything surrounding that.

At least, it’d be fine to tell him that we’d met on the street today─yesterday if we were going by the calendar─and that we’d talked a little.

Oshino probably wasn’t going to back down either way.

At least, not without a fight.

And so, I talked about what happened that day while carefully─or maybe not, I don’t know─concealing the parts I’d been silenced about.

While hiding the places that needed to be hidden.

Starting with my little sisters waking me up that morning.

Running into Hanekawa.

And finally─burying a cat that had been run over.

I gave him the details.

“Araragi.”

And then Oshino─

Mèmè Oshino.

Taking a cigarette out from his Hawaiian shirt pocket and putting it in his mouth without lighting it.

“Don’t tell me…this was a silver cat?” asked Mèmè Oshino.

You’ve been patient thus far.

You have my thanks.

Time for the main story.