Strike the Blood - Volume 21 - Chapter Pr

INTRO

I felt like someone was calling my name.

Brushing my long, blond hair off my cheek, I gently lifted my face.

It was the last stop on the monorail running along the coast. I was the last person left in the train car.

Framed by a square window, the scenery slowly scrolled past my vision.

A serene sky. A blue sea. A horde of buildings standing still under powerful sunlight. This was the landscape of the artificial isle of eternal summer.

Leaning back against my seat, I gazed absentmindedly at that vista.

The vibrations from the still-accelerating motors spread faintly through the soles of my feet.

When I looked at the city through the glass of the nicely air-conditioned train car, it was as though I was hovering in a vat of cold water. Slightly stifling but not altogether unpleasant. It felt nostalgic somehow.

Seabirds flew alongside the monorail train as it crossed a bridge spanning a canal.

Just then, someone called my name.

“Morning, Avrora.”

“…Eh?”

Taken aback, I shifted my gaze toward the voice.

I should have been the only person in the car, but there was someone standing right there.

The girl wore the same school uniform as I did. She had steel-colored hair.

Based on the ribbon on her chest, I thought she was probably in the same grade I was. I didn’t recognize her face, though.

She had pretty, mature-looking eyes, but she didn’t seem intimidating. If anything, the silly expression on her face made her seem quite sociable. It set me at ease a little.

“Who…are you? Why do you know my name?”

I looked up at the steely-haired girl and inquired about this.

For some reason, my awkward, trembling voice seemed foreign to me.

When was the last time I’d spoken to anyone before this? I really couldn’t remember. I’d forgotten even the way I used to talk.

“Because you’re Kojou’s friend.”

The girl with steel-colored hair spoke with a little smile on her face.

The monorail train tilted as it rounded a curve.

Her hair rose and fluttered to match.

For some reason, the way it ignored gravity made me think of a dragon soaring in the sky.

A dragon with a steel-colored mane—

“…Kojou?” I prompted back, perplexed.

It took me a little while to understand that this was someone’s name.

It wasn’t a common name by any means, yet the instant I heard her invoke it, my heart stirred.

“Yes, Kojou Akatsuki, the boy who was once called the Fourth Primogenitor—the World’s Mightiest Vampire. You know him well, Avrora Florestina.”

The girl continued on, seeing right through my inner turmoil.

“What are you talking about?”

My diction unwittingly grew rougher as I replied.

“Vampires and whatever are just made up, right? There’s no way they really exist…!”

“You have a point… There aren’t any vampires on this island…”

Surprisingly, the girl readily accepted this.

She was staring at my lap or rather at the single book that sat on it. It was the tale of a vampire who commanded twelve beasts to serve him.

“That’s why you need to wake up soon, Avrora the Twelfth—”

The girl drew her lips close to my ear and whispered this to me.

Rattle, went the monorail train as it lurched. It had switched tracks.

I instantly picked the book up from my lap as it threatened to fall off. By the time I lifted my head once more, the girl with steel-colored hair had vanished from sight. I was the only one there.

Was I daydreaming? I wondered as I bit my lip.

The monorail kept on running.

The silver-colored cars of the train slipped through gaps between inorganic, gray buildings.

The bare rail was curved almost like an artery. It was part of an artificial city that had been constructed with carbon fiber, resin, and nanotechnology.

Though the landscape should have been familiar to me, I shook my head instead, feeling vaguely perplexed at it.

Something about it differed from the landscape in my memories, but I couldn’t tell what.

The world always looked so nonsensical that I worried I’d misremembered.

The powerful rays of sun pouring down, the glimmering surface of the sea—

My heart leaped fiercely when I realized that was all above my head.

The uninterrupted, pure-blue sky unfurled beneath me as far as my eyes could see.

The buildings from the sky toward the surface.

I made an incoherent yelp at the world where the sky and the ground were inverted.

The monorail kept running through the city.

A city without vampires.