Ex6-3. The Game Begins

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/63/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Yes… yes, please do that. Yes, for now—though I think it’s only a matter of time until we’re found.”

While they waited for the train at the station, Shuri was on the phone the whole time with the main house.
Even Senri beside her could faintly hear a thick male voice.

“I understand, but at present protecting my sister is all I can manage… Dispatch someone here? From the branch family? But are they all right on that side?”

The sight of family bowing and scraping to a superior was not something one wanted to watch.
Still less when the person on the other end was so high-handed.
Her sister was working this hard to protect her—how could they scold her in a situation like this.
They were just sitting somewhere safe looking important anyway, Senri thought venomously, warming her hands on a hot lemon tea she had bought at the station.

“I intend to do everything I can. Yes, what they’ll try next is a complete unknown, so depending on the case even the main house’s location might be—!? I-I’m sorry. That was a thoughtless remark. Yes, I pray for your safety. That’s all.”

At the end Shuri spoke with her head bowed, and hung up.
Then she looked at the screen and let out a long breath.
White vapor drifted through the dim station concourse.

“Good work, Sis.”
“Ahaha… it’s a strange thing, getting tired just from talking. I really can’t stand people who look down on you unconditionally.”
“Nobody likes that. They shouldn’t come after us. The vampires should just go to the main house.”
“If they overheard that it would be a disaster.”
“You think they’re bugging us?”
“They might. Well, I agree with you, Senri.”

They were speaking ill of people who had been spoken of ill enough already, but there were reasons they deserved it.
While thinking it was not very admirable, they spent the ten minutes until the train arrived warming to complaints about the main house.
Perhaps because of that, the fear from when they had left the house had eased, enough that it even felt a little like a trip.
But that was only because they had not actually seen a vampire yet, and it did not feel real.
It was better than wearing themselves down.
They ought to laugh while they still could. In a cornered situation, it was not only the body that was ground away. The heart was no exception.

◇◇◇

 

The hotel the main house had arranged was about three stations from their home stop.
Honestly, no one knew where was safe and where was dangerous.
The hotel where they would stay tonight had been chosen because there were no reports of victims in the surrounding area, and it was thought to be outside the Demi-Vamps’ range of activity.
Of course, that also made it easier to choose as the next target, but once you started saying that there was no end.
The vampire victims had already spread nationwide.
Wherever you went, possibility clung to you. You had to accept it.

“…Is this it?”

They got off the train and walked two minutes from the station.
The hotel they wanted was, literally, under their noses.
Senri looked up at the building and said, openly disappointed,

“Ugh, a hardcore business hotel.”
“Don’t be picky. Let’s be glad we got a room at this hour.”
“True. They won’t think a pair of delicate sisters like us would be hiding in a drab hotel like this.”

Shuri smiled at her sister, who was recovering her usual self.
For a while after leaving the house, Senri had been thoroughly frightened, clinging to her sister’s sleeve the whole time.
That had been cute in its own way, but Shuri was more at ease when Senri was her ordinary self.

They went into the hotel and finished reception at the front desk.
The names were aliases, of course. This sort of work was the main house’s specialty.
Even so, unused to staying under false names, both of them were tense until the check-in was done.
When the procedures were finished, they received the card keys, got into the elevator, and let out a breath of relief.

“Haaaa…”

The instant the doors closed, they exhaled almost at the same time.
Then they looked at each other blankly and, without either taking the lead, started to laugh.
It was a thoroughly silly exchange, but even while holding her stomach Senri confirmed, once again, that they were sisters.
While that was going on the elevator reached the fourth floor in no time.
Shuri held Senri back with one hand so she would not step out first, and carefully set foot on the floor.
First she checked that no one was in the corridor.
Then she closed her eyes, sharpened her senses, and searched for presence as well.

“Sis?”

To Senri it only looked as if she had closed her eyes and gone silent, so confusion was natural.
But any explanation could wait until they were in the room.
Shuri looked calm at a glance, but her heart was pounding hard.
She had almost no real combat experience.
In training she had encountered similar situations, but then there had been no one she had to protect.
Where and how to move correctly, she would have to find out by feel.

“…This seems all right for now. Senri, first let’s check the emergency exit.”
“O-okay.”

As an amateur, Senri walked glued to Shuri’s back and confirmed the door to the emergency exit at the end of the floor.
It was locked, but it seemed it would open without trouble.
Beyond the door was a blunt metal stair going down to the ground.
She would rather not meet a situation that required using it—but praying would not change the result.
The result was known only to the vampires.
When they had finished checking the escape route, they finally headed for the room.
Room 403, around the middle of the corridor.
They slid the card key into the slit near the knob, unlocked it, and went quickly inside.
The door closed, and the auto-lock’s clack echoed through the room.
They both let out a breath.
An enclosed space gave the sense of safety that said there were no enemies here.
If the room had been large it would not have been so, but fortunately it was only wide enough that two beds side by side filled more than half the floor.
The rest held a shelf, a TV, and a small refrigerator: a truly spare interior.
The bath was a unit bath—and in this case they ought to be grateful there was a bath at all.
The moment Senri entered she went to the shelf in the corner and touched the LAN cable coming from it.

“Wired, in this day and age… it’s stable, but still.”
“Be glad there’s an internet line at all. It’s a cheap inn.”
“Fiiine. Well, I don’t feel like messing with a computer right now anyway.”

Among the things Senri had brought from home was a laptop.
It was a generation-old, low-spec thing, but it could handle simple work.
Once they had finished checking the interior, Senri gained peace of mind, and at the same time fatigue rushed over her body.
In one way and another, the tension had been masking physical exhaustion.
She gave herself over to the heaviness and dived onto the fluffy bed.
Bof.
Face buried in the bedding, lying on her stomach, Senri stopped moving.

“If you’re going to sleep, get under the covers properly. You’ll catch a cold.”
“Yeah, I knooow.”

Even as she said it she did not move.
Honestly, Shuri thought, exasperated, but a smile rose to her mouth as she watched her sister.
Just looking at her was healing, so Shuri was quite the siscon herself.
For a while Senri only squirmed on the bed like a caterpillar, and after more time she slowly sat up and, with sluggish movements, crawled under the covers.
Her clothes would wrinkle, but they had not prepared a change. For tonight they would have to sleep as they were.
When she confirmed that her sister had begun to breathe in sleep, Shuri turned out the light and got into bed as well.
Compared with usual it was still too early to sleep, but she had to store strength for tomorrow.
Before sleeping she picked up her phone and checked whether there was any contact from the main house.
One notification.

“I’ll head your way tomorrow morning. Do you need anything?”

It was from Anji, a man who ranked as Shuri’s subordinate.
He was large, with a shaved head and a sour face, a taciturn man who looked good in a suit. Honestly she was not very comfortable with him, but they had left the house in a rush, so there was a great deal they needed.
Food, underclothes, disguise tools, weapons, and so on: she listed everything she could think of and sent a reply.
He was a capable man, so even at this hour he would calmly gather what she had requested and deliver it by morning.
The problem was whether vampires would interfere on the way.
That they would know tomorrow. If he did not come on time, something had happened.

 

◇◇◇

 

Dawn broke.
Perhaps because of the fatigue, they both slept far more soundly than they had expected.
They had not even set an alarm, so Senri and Shuri did not wake even at the hour when they would ordinarily already have been up.
What woke them was a somewhat loud knock.

“Nnh… noisy. Do you know what time it is…”

Shuri sat up, rubbed her sleepy eyes with the back of her hand, and the moment she saw the clock her face went pale.

“Crap, it’s already nine!? So that sound is—”
“Lady Shuri, are you not there? If there is no further reply I will judge it an emergency and destroy the door to enter.”
“Aaaah, wait! Wait! Stop, stop!”

In a great hurry she tumbled off the bed, somehow stood from all fours, and dashed to the door.
The man waiting beyond it did not change his expression even at the sight of Shuri with bed-head in a complete mess.
That lack of expression only made the pressure worse.
A scar on his cheek, narrow eyes, and a black suit that suited him rather too well combined into considerable force. From any angle he looked like nothing but a yakuza.

“Ahaha, sorry, Anji. I guess we’d built up more fatigue than I thought…”
“…These are what you asked for.”
“Thanks. There was a lot. Was it hard?”
“No, not particularly. I have orders from headquarters, so I’ll be going.”

With that he left the front of the room in haste.
“Still as unsociable as ever,” Shuri sighed.
She peered into the two plastic bags he had handed her.
One was packed with daily necessities; the other held breakfast.
Or—judging by the amount, perhaps lunch was included as well.
It was all convenience-store food, nutritionally biased, but he seemed to have chosen high-calorie items.
In his own way, he was thinking about an emergency.

“I don’t want to be driven into a situation where we can’t even secure food…”

She muttered it alone at the entrance.
Then she closed the door and turned—

“Sis, did someone come…?”

Senri was looking this way with a sleepy face.
The series of clattering sounds had woken her.
That said, it was already past nine. Even Senri, who was sloppy on days off, could reasonably get up by now.

“I received supplies from someone from the main house I contacted yesterday. There’s breakfast too, so let’s eat here.”
“Convenience-store food, maybe?”
“Yes. Not something I usually eat, but… you like this sort of thing, don’t you, Senri?”
“Yeah yeah! Junk food forever!”
“Haaah. You’re definitely going to get sick someday…”

Ignorant of her sister’s exasperation, Senri took the breakfast bag in high spirits.
She spread the contents on the bed at once and began to consider, hand on her chin, which to eat.
Then she noticed a letter mixed in with the food.

“Is this maybe… Sis, a letter from that main-house place?”
“Oh, it is. Anji mixed it in without saying anything. What was he going to do if we didn’t notice.”

Unlike him, who did his work properly if nothing else.
Shuri tilted her head, took the white envelope from Senri, and checked front and back with suspicion.
The front was blank, completely clean.
But on the back, just one phrase—

“‘Do not open’…?”

That was all that was written.

“What’s that. They hand it over and say don’t open it. Isn’t that weird?”
“It is. I think it’s strange too.”
“Maybe there’s a talisman for defeating vampires inside, and we’re absolutely not to open it until the fated hour arrives—that kind of vibe?”
“I don’t see the point of giving something that important to a grunt like me.”

She tried holding it to the light. There seemed to be only a single slip of paper inside.
Even looking with Shuri’s “eyes,” it did not appear to contain a talisman with power, so Senri’s theory was wrong as well.

“…For now, shall we eat.”

They put off the contents of the letter while remaining curious, and first filled their stomachs.
Shuri took one salt rice ball and one kelp rice ball.
Senri took fried potatoes, a melon bread, and a tuna-mayo rice ball as well.
Shuri frowned at the obviously unhealthy choices, but Senri looked so happy that for today she decided to close her eyes and say nothing.

“Hmm? Sis, you using the microwave?”
“Rice balls taste better warmed. I’ll do your tuna-mayo too, all right?”

As she spoke, Shuri tried to take Senri’s rice ball.
Senri refused desperately.

“Nooo, if you warm it the nori loses its crunch! Besides, convenience-store rice balls are made to taste good even cold!”
“Even so, rice balls are basically better warm.”
“That’s a generation gap.”
“What is my same-year little sister talking about. Fine. If you say so, I’ll eat one cold too.”

In the end, only the salt rice ball went around in the microwave.
That one had no nori, so Senri had no complaint.

There was no table in the room for two people to sit at, so they naturally sat on the bed to eat.
Senri opened the melon-bread bag, held it in her right hand, and gripped her phone in her left.
For her daily check of social media.

“Senri, that’s bad manners.”
“I thought I’d check what happened with that direct message from the vampire.”

Told that, Shuri could not complain.
Whether Senri was actually checking that was doubtful, but if it was a sedative for Senri’s mind, perhaps she could overlook it in an emergency—Shuri’s thinking was flexible enough to go that far.
The meal proceeded in silence, and before she knew it the older sister had polished off both rice balls.
As a member of an athletic club she was quite a big eater.
Considering she might not be able to move if she overate, today’s breakfast had been held to less than half her usual amount.
The younger sister, meanwhile, had finally finished one melon bread.
Or—precisely speaking, she should have finished it a little while ago.

“…Senri?”

But for some reason she had stopped, still clutching the empty bag.
Shuri called to her, worried, but there was no response.
Where her gaze was fixed was—the phone.

“Don’t tell me that vampire Chigusa or whatever sent something again?”
“N-no… it’s, the tag…”
“Tag?”

Shuri, hopeless with machines, could not possibly understand the net terms Senri used.
She must have decided she had to see it herself. She leaned in to peer at the screen.
The ranks of images and text nearly made her dizzy.
Among them she found one string she recognized.

“Looking for Senri Shirogane.”

Wording as if they were searching for a lost cat.
It was lined up all over the screen of Senri’s phone.

“Why is your name on here so many times.”
“They’re looking… for me. Collecting sightings, trying to pin down where I am.”
“Who would go along with that? There’s no reason to provide information.”
“But!”

Senri touched the screen with a finger and stared as if devouring the flowing text.

“There are photos, and the school name—and the address too.”
“Someone’s telling them?”
“I think so. A thrill-seeker? No, even then people don’t usually just put up a stranger’s face photo that easily!”
“…”

What Shuri suddenly imagined was the worst case.
It could not be, but if so, it would fit.
Namely—that every person posting and providing information had already been vampirized.

“Senri, can you tell the gender of the people posting?”
“From the writing, I think a lot of them are women.”
“I knew it…”
“Knew what? Does gender have something to do with it?”
“The vampires have been killing only men and bringing women over as allies. If the ones posting your information online are vampires, it only adds up if they’re all women.”
“All of this is vampires…? But it isn’t just local. People living all over Japan are talking, trying to figure out where I am from photos!?”

Sweat stood on Senri’s forehead; her eyes were wide.
She kept slowly scrolling the social-media screen, and stopped when a certain image appeared.
Her fingertips and lips trembled.
Until now it had only been a threat in writing, only a threat over the net, so she had been able to keep a degree of peace of mind.
What she faced now was different.
The feeling that she was being cornered tried to crush Senri with overwhelming mass.

“She’s using an alias, but that girl is staying at the hotel where I work right now. This is the security-camera footage.”

It was, unmistakably, an image of the hotel where they were currently staying.
Senri and Shuri checking in were clearly shown.
There was no need even to think who had done this.
It was obvious.
Her—the woman at the front desk, who was also in the image.

“What… so there was already a vampire here too? This was supposed to be a hotel the main house secured. What have they been doing!?”

Seeing the image, Shuri lost her composure.
Then she suddenly felt a sharp sense of wrongness.
If this hotel had already fallen into vampire hands, why had Anji been able to come in normally?
Had it already been in enemy hands when they arrived?
If so, they should have put poison in the food, but so far there was no sign of that.
His expressionlessness, lack of feeling, and curtness were nothing new. In that case, what they ought to suspect was only that envelope marked “Do not open.”
Shuri snatched up the white packet as if leaping on it, tore it roughly, and took out the letter inside.
She opened the thin paper folded in two. On it was a single line.

“It’s your fault.”

That was all that had been printed.
She had no idea what it meant, but the sentence in inorganic gothic type fed her anxiety.
A mere prank?
But would they, after cornering them this far, set a prank here that meant nothing?
The possibility it was a hint, the possibility it was a trap: she turned her thoughts, trying to reason… but before she reached an answer, the correct one was shown.
Outside the window, reacting to a shadow falling from above, Shuri looked that way on reflex.
It was a matter of an instant.
But in that moment she—met Anji’s eyes as he jumped from the hotel roof.
Unusually, haste showed on his face, and his mouth seemed to move slightly.
Perhaps he had been saying “Help me.”
It was meaningless. However excellent Shuri’s physical ability, she could not defy gravity.
Immediately after—

—Bang!

A sound like something hard bursting echoed outside the hotel.
Senri, who had known neither the letter’s contents nor Anji’s presence, started at the sound, her shoulders jumping, and looked out the window.

“Sis, that was…? No matter how you think about it, that was a bad sound.”

Shuri did not answer Senri’s question. She could not.
A person had died. Someone she knew, before her eyes.
She had thought she understood that they were murderers, and that her own life was in danger.
But when “death” was thrust at her like this, her heart broke, her body froze.

“Anji… you’re kidding, right…?”

By now, no doubt, he was displaying an unsightly death on the ground below the hotel.
A head slammed into concrete at high speed would have shattered to pieces, painting the surroundings with pink brain matter and red blood.
White bone fragments, and likewise white eyeballs, yellow fat and red muscle, or white tendon, might be decorating it in due measure.
What of the body that barely remained. Like an elementary-school child who had failed a vault landing, was it in a pathetic posture with the hips stuck out.
This was retribution.
He was a man, and he had been alive, so he had had to die.
If he was going to die anyway, they might as well make him a little useful.
It was only a thought of that degree.
But the effect was immediate.
It was more than enough, at least, to break the heart of Shuri, who had meant to fight vampires.

“Dead…? Anji, that easily…? That can’t, that mustn’t be allowed to—”
“What’s wrong, Sis, your face is dead white. Is it that bad? Should we run?”

Shuri considered carefully how to explain.
Senri had probably not yet realized Anji was dead. A girl who had lived far from people’s deaths could not understand that that sound was a person striking the ground and breaking.
Shuri wished she would stay that way if possible.
It was enough that she herself sink into a worthless world.
Then what to do. How to describe the present situation.
She covered her face with her hands and tried at the same time to recover her composure, but she could not easily return from the disruption of a person’s death.

Anji was dead, probably using some kind of brainwashing to control his body.
That an envelope had been in the convenience-store bag he bought meant that at that point his body’s freedom had already been taken.
And considering he had jumped at the moment it was opened, as if to push the crime onto Shuri—this room, too, was already being watched.

Telling herself to calm down was unreasonable.
By what logic could they control Anji, plant a letter, watch the room, and make him kill himself at the timing the letter was opened.
And against a monster capable of that, how was inexperienced Shuri supposed to fight.
The more she stacked thought on thought, the deeper she sank into a quagmire.
No—in the first place her ability could not open a way through, so a dead end was the correct conclusion.
But she could not give up here.
If it were only Shuri it would be one thing, but there was Senri, whom she had to protect.

In the ears of Shuri, lost in thought, a faint footstep sounded.
Outside the room, someone walking down the corridor, approaching.
Tension ran through her.
She snatched up the long cylindrical bag she had brought from home, opened the zipper, and took out the contents.
A Japanese sword of two shaku three sun, housed in a wooden scabbard close to white.
Shuri got off the bed, stood straight facing the door, and slowly drew the pure silver blade.

“That’s…”
“An exorcist’s tachi, they say. I haven’t used it much in real combat, but—”

She discarded the scabbard on the floor and held the sword at hip height.

“Excuse me, guests, I have something to tell you. May I ask you to open the door?”

A voice came with a knock, knock.
How brazen.
Indeed, if it were a message about the strange sound from outside, the timing would not be odd—but Shuri already knew the woman at the front desk was no longer human.

“Guests? Gues~ts?”

The woman kept knocking persistently.
The sound gradually grew stronger; the irritation seemed to reach even Shuri.
Thud, thud-thud-thud! As if she no longer meant to hide what she was, she struck the door with her fists in succession.
At last she lost patience, and something like a sharp needle pierced the thick door.
It should have been made of a sturdy material at a glance, but it was being cut as if it were yokan. Watching that, Shuri swallowed from tension.
Eventually a circular piece dropped to the floor with a clunk, and from beyond it the woman peered into the room.

“…Guests, you are here.”

There Shuri first realized that what had sliced the door was claws.
But that was the extent of the difference from a human.
Otherwise, from any angle, she looked like nothing but a beautiful woman.

(Cut her down? Can I? Me, who’s shaken just because Anji died…!)

Shuri asked herself.
However much she told her head this was not murder, the monster drawing near still looked human, enough that her mind would not accept it.
Even with her eyes, that was how it appeared. If that woman walked through town, no one would be able to tell she was a vampire.
That was why the invasion had been carried out without anyone noticing, and yet boldly.
Could she win against such an opponent.

She weighed the two emotions whirling in her chest.
One was fear, a rational judgment born of the resignation that no matter how she struggled she could not win.
One was courage, a brave and reckless flame born of the resolve to protect her most beloved sister no matter what.

“Fufu.”

Ah—then there was nothing to think about.
Shuri put strength back into both hands gripping the sword and glared at the vampire with a look full of fighting spirit.
She adjusted her foot position, searching for the optimal place to take off.
When that movement stopped dead, she put power in as if conducting it from toes to calves to thighs, and stamped the floor hard.
Through her skinny jeans, the muscles of Shuri’s legs tightened.
Her leg strength, drawn taut to the limit like a bowstring, was released all at once at the same instant the vampire took a step this way and her sole touched the ground.
Bagii!
Shattering the floorboards, Shuri advanced like a bullet.
From the entrance to the beds was a narrow corridor in a straight line; there was not enough space to dodge.
But that was the same for Shuri.
The vampire, though her face showed haste, readied her claws and met her.
But—however inhuman her physical ability, in experience and technique Shuri was superior.
She closed on the vampire at a speed that literally did not catch the eye, and in the interval from catching her within the sword’s reach until they passed, Shuri swung four times.
Slashes at a speed Senri of course, and even the vampire, could not see.
At that speed, landing was not easy either. Shuri took her finishing stance and still slammed her back into the door before she finally stopped.

“One on one, I can fight too…”

Even as she said it, her voice shook.
What lay tumbled before Shuri was the end of a human body, divided into several pieces of flesh.
The sensation of cutting meat and bone still remained in her hands. It would probably never disappear in her life.
But it was a burden she would have had to bear someday anyway.
It was good that it was now, when she had the justification of “for my sister,” Shuri thought with relief.

“Sis, th-that… is she dead?”

Senri, deathly pale, said it from the bed, her legs giving out.

“Senri, you’d better not look too much.”
“Yeah…”

Warned by her sister, she shut her eyes tightly.
Shuri would rather not have shown her the corpse either, but it was an emergency. It could not be helped.
But a direct assault on the room meant the hotel was already not a safe zone.
No—perhaps safe zones no longer existed in this town.
Shuri looked at her own palm.
Could she protect them to the end, with her own power.
Having defeated a vampire unharmed like this, she had confirmation that one-by-one there was no problem.
She had not trained since childhood for nothing. In degree of inhuman physical ability, she was probably above a vampire.
The exorcist bloodline had long worked in the shadows of history.
The swordsmanship built up over long years was on an entirely different dimension from techniques transmitted in the surface world.
—Though that was limited to physical ability.

“It hurts… it huuurts…”

Such a voice came from the head that had fallen to the ground.
At first she thought it was a trick of the ear, but Senri seemed to have heard exactly the same sound.

“I see, that’s why Lady Chigusa said not to overdo it… ah, I wonder if I’ll get scolded… I only wanted to be praised, I overdid it, I wonder if I’ll be punished…”

And Shuri saw the mouth of the severed head on the floor moving.
She had heard that you could not finish off a youkai-like thing unless you crushed the heart or crushed the head.
She had let her guard down because the opponent had human form.
Shuri hurried to the head and drove the tip of the sword at it.
But—

“Kh, what is this… black haze is getting in the way…!”

The tip was blocked by shadow and could not pierce.
Meanwhile the vampire’s body was being joined shadow to shadow, regenerating.
With her own power, she could not purify this shadow.
Judging that, Shuri ran to Senri, who still had her eyes closed.
She picked up the scabbard, sheathed the sword, and forcibly lifted Senri’s body.

“Hyawah!?”
“We’re running, Senri! I can’t beat that as I am now!”
“G-got it. But I can run too, you know!?”
“This is faster. Be good, trust your sister, and hold on! And don’t look at the ground, whatever you do. Look only at the sky until I give permission, all right?”
“Okay!”

In a princess carry she moved to the window and had Senri open it, both her own hands being full.
The window was higher than her waist, so Shuri jumped and leapt outside.
Of course there was no footing beyond.
Free fall from the fourth floor of a building.
Senri was so frightened she could not even make a sound, her mouth open.
The wind was so cold Shuri grimaced.
Then they landed.
The sound of soles striking the ground mixed with a wet splat of scattering liquid.
Directly below had been Anji’s corpse.
Shuri’s feet had firmly stepped in that pool of blood.
It was fortunate she had not directly stepped on the body or what seemed to be scattered organs.
The smell drifting around was terrible as well, blood and waste mixed together.

“Ugh, awful smell… what is this.”

Before Senri could catch on, Shuri ran from the spot.
The place was a narrow street beside the hotel.
Looking around, there was no one.
It had not been a busy place to begin with, but even when they went farther out onto the street in front of the station there was not a single person, which was clearly abnormal.

“Hey Sis, do I still need to stay like this?”
“Stay like this a while longer, please. We don’t know when or where we’ll be attacked.”
“Got it… I mean, Sis, you’re way more amazing than I thought. Jumping from a building unharmed—you’re not human.”
“That’s the kind of house ours is.”
“…Maybe so.”

Senri felt as if her sister, whom she had finally drawn close to, had gone far away again.
Or rather, she had been made to realize they had been residents of different worlds from the start.
The hopelessly thick wall between her and Shuri might have been something it was useless even to think of breaking, from the beginning.

“We were rats in a bag from the start, I suppose. Looking at this scene, I feel it keenly.”
“It is the countryside, but it isn’t like there’s nobody. It’s like a ghost town… no, in this case maybe a vampire town? Nihihi.”

Looking at the rotary in front of the station, they each offered their impressions.
Senri was laughing without even knowing herself what was funny; the damage she was taking seemed large.
Not a person’s figure, not even a single car parked: as if they had wandered into another world.

“What do we do now, Sis.”
“First let’s look for a safe place. There must be one somewhere.”

Shuri put the wish into words, believing it could come true, and started walking.
Then the phone Senri had casually brought began to tremble in her pocket.
At the peculiar vibration—buuuu—Shuri stopped at once.
At the ticklish feeling Senri immediately shoved a hand into her pocket and took it out.

“Senri… you brought it along, didn’t you.”
“Nihihi. I think it was reflex. Before I knew it it was in my pocket. Looks like a call from Saya. What do we do?”
“She’s your friend. I think you should answer. The school might still be safe.”

Having her sister’s permission, Senri touched the call button with a tense face.
She switched it to speakerphone as well, so Shuri could hear the conversation.

“Ah, you picked up. Senri, why are you skipping school?”

From the first word, Saya spoke in a tone that had nothing but a sense of wrongness.

“What’s with that way of talking. Don’t tell me you met that woman again.”
“Yeah. This way’s cuter, right?”
“Cute, or just normal—it isn’t like you, Saya.”
“You’re mean, Senri. Your friend is trying hard to change.”

It was not that Senri did not understand what she wanted to say.
But the change was too sudden, if nothing else.
If someone’s speech changed this much in only a few days, anyone would find it suspicious.

“Anyway, why are you out in the end?”
“Saya, before that I want to check—”
“What?”

Senri wiped every smile from her face and asked in a calm voice.

“It’s class time right now, isn’t it.”

And yet why was Saya calling Senri so openly.
From the ambient sound behind her, it was clear she was not at home.
The place was school. That much was certain.

“Self-study, self-study. We don’t need the teacher anymore.”
“The teacher’s gone? Who was first period again…”
“Senri, that’s not it. Listen carefully.”
“Heh?”
“That’s right, it’s not, Senri. I said we don’t need them.”

Don’t need.
The teacher.
Those two words would not quite join in Senri’s head.
Need or not, it was true they were the sort of teacher one was happier without.
But—students should not have the right to decide that.

“Saya, what does that mean? What happened to the teacher?”
“We’re doing a dissection in the lab.”
“Wasn’t first period Japanese history? That teacher could teach biology?”
“Ahahaha, you say funny things, Senri. No. The one being dissected is the teacher. We don’t need them, so the other teachers suggested we put them to use.”

Senri still could not understand what Saya was saying at all.
The teacher, because they weren’t needed, was dissected.
Whom? What? How?
The more she asked for detail, the deeper she sank into a swamp, and her head grew confused.
Regardless of her bewilderment, several girls’ voices could be heard in the classroom, playing together.
It was peaceful.
Compared with the empty space in front of the station, an all-too-peaceful everyday was spreading on the other side.
That gap only pushed Senri further from understanding the truth.

“Hey Senri, are you ‘still’? Your sister’s with you, right? Then both of you come to school. We’ll do it for you together.”
“Do it… for us?”
“Yeah. We’ll show you so many things humans could never do, and you’ll get along with girls you never could before. You’ll make more friends—maybe even partners, maybe even wives. It’s really fun. You’re happy. It feels wonderful, you know?”
“Saya, that’s…”

Coming this far, even Senri noticed.
The school had long since ceased to be a safe place.
Seeing her sister bite her lip with a pained look, Shuri could not watch and whispered at her ear, “Hang up already.”
Saya still seemed to be saying something, but Senri laid a finger on the end-call button with a lifeless movement.

“School… no good, huh.”
“Yes. Easy to enter and leave, and full of people. It can’t be helped if it was targeted first.”
“Where else should we go… the police station, or something?”

What rose in Senri’s mind was Kana’s face.
Cheerful, bright, but with a police officer’s sense of justice as well, and of course she practiced martial arts.
Perhaps she, Senri hoped—and as if waiting for that very timing, the phone sounded a message arrival.
The sender was Kana.

“Senri, shall I look?”
“No, it’s fine. Let’s look together.”

Senri touched the notification icon with a fingertip.
The screen changed, and what appeared was a cheerful line: “Something really happy happened, so I’m sharing with you too, Senri.”
And a photo sent with it filled the screen.

“Commemorating my first murder.”

So titled, the photo showed a smiling Kana making a peace sign, covered in blood, in a two-shot with a man’s head from which everything above the middle of the face had been torn away.
Senri had heard about the necklace around the man’s neck.
Kana had given it to him, she was fairly sure.
In other words this man was—her boyfriend, most likely.

“Uuu…”

At a photograph so gruesome, Senri dropped the phone from her hand without meaning to and covered her mouth with the freed one.
She somehow held down the rising nausea, but the close-up of the man’s corpse was burned into her memory.
She had seen gore images many times, but it was a different matter when it was a photograph of someone she knew.
She would not be able to forget it for a while.
Shuri tried to comfort her, touching Senri’s head, but it went without saying that she herself was in great shock as well.
Of course the corpse was impactful.
But in Shuri’s case, the fact that justice-minded Kana had become a murderer was hopelessly sad.

“Vampires… why do this.”

Shuri burned with anger.
But the two of them alone could do nothing. They had to find allies.
If Kana was in this state, the police were no good either.
Probably that junior who had caught a cold—that had been the cause.
It had not really been a cold.
A woman already vampirized had surely used it as a pretext to lure Kana.
And Saya, too, could be thought of as caused by the woman who had come up often in conversation lately.
Senri had been relieved to hear she had a male lover, but if, like Anji, they could freely control men by some means, that had probably been a doll to advertise that she herself was not a vampire.
If they had noticed sooner—they both regretted it, but even if they had noticed sooner, what could they have done.
Two powerless humans who could not kill even one of the vampires that must be crowding in huge numbers.

“Senri, may I borrow your phone?”
“…If it isn’t broken, use it however you like.”

Shuri set Senri down, crouched, and picked up the phone from the ground.
Fortunately it was only scratched; the screen was not cracked, and it did not seem broken.
Relying on memory, she entered a phone number.
What appeared on the screen was the number of an executive high in the main house.
Ordinarily he was not someone she could contact without permission, but this was an emergency. Whether she was scolded or punished, securing safety came first.
Why, of all the people in the main house, she had chosen him: because he was a dyed-in-the-wool coward.
He would absolutely not leave a safe zone himself, and would kick other executives down without a qualm to secure his own safety. Shuri had despised him from the heart.
She had even heard he had a custom-made shelter for emergencies.
It had apparently been built with times like this in mind, when inhuman sorts came attacking. If he had managed to flee into the shelter, perhaps—that was what Shuri thought.

The ringtone began.
Rrring, rrring, rrring—
The electronic tone rang hollow. He still did not pick up.
Four times, five times, six times.
Perhaps he was looking at the number on the screen and deliberately not answering.
Seven, eight, nine.
A call at this timing could be nothing but trouble.

“Please, pick up…!”

Still Shuri prayed.
Sweat seeping into the hand gripping the phone, she clung to the man she hated who ought to be on the other end.
And when the twentieth ring sounded.
With a click, the call connected.

“Ah, um, this is Shuri Shirogane! The exorcist shrine maiden! There’s something I want to ask of you right now!”

Shuri spoke desperately, but the voice that came back was not the man’s she had expected.

“So with this one can converse? How wonderful. Eh, it can already be heard on the other side!? How rude of me. But what should I do? Hold this to my ear and speak, is it. …Ah, the other way? Like this? Ah, the top and bottom… I see, one does it like this. U-uum, ahem, ah—ah… I find myself rather nervous, but one must become accustomed to this world’s culture as well. Then… at last, I shall speak. I am going… Good day, Ms. Shuri Shirogane. I am Nunnally, a Demi-Vamp—”

Shuri ended the call without allowing a word and threw the phone to the ground.
Seeing her sister rarely show her emotions so plainly, Senri looked uneasy.

“Sis…?”
“Kh… the main house is no good either. If he’s been taken, everywhere is finished. Total annihilation.”

The proud shelter that was supposed to survive a nuke and keep monsters out had been powerless before vampires.
Who on earth could win against such an opponent.
Even if it were the main house, even if the police—no, even if the military moved, they could not possibly match them.

“Then why are we fine? It’s weird, right? The main-house place, the school, the police! They’re all vampires, and only we’re still human. That’s unnatural!”

Senri was right.
Far too unnatural, far too mysterious.
There was only one possibility that came to mind.

“We aren’t alive… we’re being kept alive.”
“Why only us! What did we do that—”

There ought to be parts that differed from other humans.
That they had actively interfered with the vampires.
That they had spread rumors and tried to restrain their movements.
And—that the older sister had been a person of an exorcist bloodline hostile to vampires.

“No… don’t tell me, just that. Just such a trivial thing…”

Senri collapsed, falling to her knees.
Shuri gripped her left upper arm hard with her right hand and bit her lower lip in frustration.
In front of the station, where the sounds of living humans had vanished, a literal complete silence filled the space.
Whatever they said, whatever they thought, they were already powerless.
There was no intact place left in this world—knowing that now, it would be hard to raise the broken bluff again.

“If I hadn’t done that stuff, maybe nobody would have gotten involved…”
“Please don’t blame yourself, Senri. I was the one who asked. I’m the one who should be blamed…!”
“That is a little incorrect, Shuri.”
“!?”

A sweet, languid voice whispered at Shuri’s ear.
She spun at once and leapt back.
While still in the air she put a hand on the hilt of the sword she held.
But there was no one there.

“Punishment is punishment, to be sure, but rather than you sisters’, it would be more accurate to say your clan’s.”
“Who are you!?”

The voice came from behind again.
But when she turned the same way, again there was no one.

“Senri, can you see them?”
“No, there’s nobody… nobody’s there, but I can hear a voice at my ear.”

If Senri could hear it at her ear as well, position did not seem to matter.
But they must be somewhere the two of them could see.

“C-come out, you monster…! You can’t lose to us anyway, so don’t use such cowardly tricks—show yourself!”
“Impatient, aren’t you. I had wanted to try a little staging.”

When the “voice” said that, black shadow began to gather in the direction of their gazes.
In time it made a human shape, acquired the outline of a body, its rises and hollows, and then color, and transformed into a small girl.
A pale, unfortunate-looking beauty in a high-school uniform, with long black hair, looked at the sisters and smiled in a way that sat uneasily on so young a face.
When her pink lips curved into a smile, Senri and Shuri felt, almost at the same time, a chill run up their spines.
And even Senri, who had no special eyes, intuited it the instant she saw that form.
That was—a being beyond human knowledge.

“We finally meet… you’re Chigusa Hinata?”
“That is correct. Chigusa Hinata, seventeen years old, a former second-year high-school student.”
“High school…? You’re saying you went to school like a normal person!?”
“Until fairly recently I was an ordinary human. Various things happened, and now I have a Demi-Vamp’s body.”
“Then! Why can you treat human lives so cheaply!”
“Did I treat them cheaply?”
“You did. A great many people died! Anji, and Kana’s boyfriend too!”
“Ah, you mean the men. In that case I simply discarded them because they were unnecessary. If things like that were alive they would only be in the way. A waste of space and oxygen.”

Faced with Chigusa, who spoke as if she felt no sense of sin, Shuri was at a loss for words.

“…I see. Right. You’re a monster. No wonder talking doesn’t work.”
“Um… Chigusa, was it.”

In place of Shuri, who had given up on dialogue, Senri spoke to Chigusa.
Chigusa turned her whole body toward her and answered with a smile. “Yes? What is it?”

“Why did you do all this?”
“A reason? If that is it, I… no, we only wish to make everyone happy. Did your friend not invite you over the phone? That is everything. Even if you refuse before you change, once you have changed, everyone can become happy. That is how it is.”
“What is happy?”
“A philosophical question. I believe it is being able to love others.”
“I think humans can do that too, though.”

Hearing Senri’s words, Chigusa laughed with a hand to her mouth.

“Indeed, they probably can. But even you understand, Senri, that not everyone is like that? Where there are happy humans, there are unhappy ones. Humans are creatures more eager to make others unhappy than to make them happy.”
“That’s wrong!”

Shuri cut in, and

“You, who know the people called the main house, should understand, should you not, Shuri?”

Chigusa returned it in a stronger tone.
It was an unmistakable fact. She could not refute it.

“As long as people are people, they are divided into happiness and unhappiness. That is why I am helping everyone become happy. If all humans could love others a little, tragedy would not occur. But they cannot, and that is why they are human. Then they have no choice but to stop being people. Half-vampires love their own kind. They possess the conditions for every living thing to become happy, unlike humans.”
“That’s impossible… you can like someone because there are people you dislike! If it’s only liking, you won’t know what’s really like!”
“And that is why unhappy humans are born. See? It is impossible for humans after all.”

Immediately after, Chigusa seemed to vanish into black mist, then instantly moved behind Senri.
She reached out and touched her hair.
At the sudden tickle from behind, goosebumps rose over Senri’s whole body.

“Hih…”
“Senri!”
“Shuri, waving a sword around is dangerous. Please be at ease. I have no intention of harming women.”
“You say that after cornering us this whole time!”
“That is punishment.”
“…For spreading rumors on the net?”

When Senri said that, Chigusa gave a small nod.

“There is that as well, certainly. But the greatest reason is that Shuri’s companions cut down our companions without question. Fortunately treatment arrived in time and there were no dead, but if my companions are hurt, even I become angry.”
“So… me and Sis.”
“The people who cut them had already been drunk from by the companions who were there. We could no longer administer punishment. That is why the lot fell to you. In short… it is taking it out on you.”

Chigusa explained as if to say she had merely played a light prank. Shuri glared at her.
Power was already gathered in all four limbs; she was ready to cut at any time.
But—if this girl was truly the vampires’ ringleader, could Shuri, who had not been able to finish the woman who attacked them at the hotel, win.
Anxiety gradually pared away the savage courage that said at least one blow.

“Ah, and I forgot to say.”

Whether she knew Shuri’s conflict or not, Chigusa raised a forefinger and said, with her brightest smile of the day,

“The punishment is not over yet.”
“Eh?”

A black circular shadow spread at the feet of Shuri, who had raised her voice.
The next instant she fell into it and vanished.

“Sis!”
“It is all right. You will see each other soon.”

Next a shadow spread at Senri’s feet as well.
She moved her legs on reflex to flee, but it had already swallowed her to the ankles and she could not move.

“Though when you next reunite—you will likely no longer be human. Kusukusu.”

She fell into darkness.
Just before, Chigusa seemed to have said something, but in her extreme state nothing reached Senri’s ears.

 

◇◇◇

 

When Senri woke, it was a gray room enclosed in unfinished concrete.
One vent in the ceiling, one sturdy-looking iron door ahead, a monitor on the wall, and no windows.
What she was lying on was a double-size pipe bed.
Contrary to the room’s spareness, the bedding seemed high-quality; it was not uncomfortable to sleep on.

“Geez, I don’t get any of this… where is this…?”

Having looked around the room once, Senri lay on her back on the bed, an arm over her forehead, and gazed at the ceiling.
Tears spilled from her eyes of their own accord.
There had been Mother, and Father, and Shuri, and Saya, and Kana.
She had not had many friends, but even so, that had surely been happiness.

“Was it bad, that I wanted it…”

In the family she had felt as if she alone were floating apart.
A mother and older sister who inherited the blood of exorcism, a father who knew all the circumstances and cooperated.
And Senri.
Everyone had been kind to her, and that had only strengthened the sense of exclusion.
As she kept shedding tears like that, the door opened with a creaking Giii.
The one who entered was a foreign girl Senri did not know, with short orange hair.
She was not especially tall.

“Sister said to treat her carefully because she’s a civilian, and it’s really true.”

The girl sat on the edge of the bed, leaned over Senri, and wiped the tears running down her cheeks with a finger.

“You’re…”
“I’m Ellis. Sister… no, Lady Chigusa asked me to look after Senri. Only for three days, but nice to meet you.”
“Look after? Three days?”
“Well, I’ll explain that now. Come on, wipe your tears and sit up.”

Faced with friendly Ellis, Senri let her wariness ease just a little.
She wiped her tears with her arm and was pulled up by Ellis’s hand to sit.

“And she wants you to watch that monitor thingy.”

As told, Senri turned her attention to the monitor mounted on the wall.
Then, as if the screen flickered, a similar room was displayed.
But it was not the same place.
In that room were Shuri and Chigusa.

“Senri!”
“Sis!”

The sisters called to each other, leaning forward.

“Now then, let us begin the explanation.”

When Chigusa approached the camera, Shuri went out of view.

“What are you going to make us do!?”
“It is simple. For three days starting today, if you do not of your own accord beg to be made into Demi-Vamps, you win. We shall swear not to lay a hand on you again.”
“As if I’d ever beg for that!”
“That’s right, I’m never becoming a vampire!”
“Yes. That spirit. Then—”
“Wha…”

On the other side of the monitor, Chigusa approached Shuri and tipped her chin up.

“Let us begin with the preparatory work.”

What followed was not a conversation. Chigusa held Shuri still and forced shadow into her through the mouth.
Shuri struggled and tried to shove her away, but in strength she was no match at all.
The more she thrashed, the more firmly she was held. Black haze leaked from the seal of their mouths.

“I see. So that’s how you do it.”

Ellis put a hand to her chin, looking at Chigusa as if something had clicked.

Senri, frightened, raised her voice at the sight of her sister’s body arching.

“Sis…? Sis, are you all right!? Hey, if you keep doing that she’ll die!”

“It’s fine. She isn’t dying. Look—the shadow’s going in.”

“She’s pouring in shadow—in other words, magical power. Originally you’d pour in magical power to charm the other person and turn them into a Demi-Vamp, but this time it’s different.”
“How is it different?”
“We don’t charm the heart. We fill only the body with magical power and raise the Mark. Then we use that for three days, until your hearts break.”
“The Mark…? Charm…?”
“Well, you’ll understand once we do it.”

Ellis, like Chigusa, lifted Senri’s chin.

“Wait…”
“No. I won’t wait. Besides, from today it gets worse than this. If you flinch at this much, what’s after will be hard, you know?”
“I don’t want… this is wrong…”
“That’s what they call human values. I’ll paint over them soon and teach you something much nicer.”
“S-sto—”

Resistance was useless. Ellis forced the same contact on her.
Shadow was poured in: thick, filling, impossible to spit out.
Senri’s will wanted none of it—help, let her go—and her body still answered against that will, in concert with her sister on the other side of the monitor.

Even as her heart refused, what had been forced into her ate into her little by little.