Ah, well─in that case, sure.
In that case.
Vampires aren’t reflected in mirrors and therefore can’t enter them─that was my logic for why Shinobu wasn’t in my shadow. I’d accepted that my partner didn’t exist in this world, but there was a hole in that logic.
A hole, or rather, an opening. The fact that I, my vampiric nature deleted, existed here was already the answer. If the same phenomenon had visited Shinobu, she too could exist.
No, putting it that way was misleading. The Shinobu Oshino I knew, or the former Heartunderblade as Ononoki called her, had indeed been left behind in the other world─but that didn’t mean she didn’t exist in this one.
Just as there was no big Karen in this world, while a small Karen existed, it had its own Shinobu Oshino.
Now I understood Ononoki’s puzzling line─about why she called me kind monster sir, monstieur, and so on.
The reason was clear in the other world. Though it wasn’t exactly polite, calling a one-time vampire thrall a monster made sense.
Miss Hachikuji and Miss Serpent saw me in the same way, but if vampires couldn’t exist in this world, a vampire thrall shouldn’t either. There was an inconsistency─they knew I’d fallen victim to a vampire but also weren’t aware of any vampires, a contradiction.
Vampires indeed didn’t exist in this world, so there was no need to call me a monster, but no vampires didn’t mean no Shinobu Oshino. I’d forgotten until just now, but according to what I’d heard over spring break a year ago, the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire, the Aberration Slayer Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, was once human.
Six hundred years ago, she was human.
Of the highest stock─yes, the kind of princess who might live in a castle, who’d see her castle as her extension. That─was her other side.
The flip side of Shinobu Oshino.
“Please, there’s no cause to feel so tense. Lift your head, Sir Araragi.”
Lift my head.
I finally noticed that I’d been having these thoughts on bent knee─I couldn’t believe it. I’d genuflected reflexively, not to the vampiric but human aura of nobility emanating from beyond the curtain.
I was no master of etiquette, but the pressure had prevented me from even standing up… No, pressure was too coarse a word. Frighteningly, it was something kinder─she’d soothed me to my knee from across the curtain.
Was this charisma? Magnetism?
I could raise my head after hearing her words, but awe filled my chest.
Meanwhile, Ononoki stood straight as a ruler next to me, which didn’t surprise me. Still, some sort of barrier seemed to prevent her from drawing any closer to the bed.
This was no aberration but a human. A human being.
This was Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, the human being, on the other side of the curtain─forget her golden age as a vampire, in terms of sheer power she was possibly weaker now than in her little-girl form. And yet.
As a human, she was nobler, more unapproachable than I’d ever experienced her. You couldn’t help but pay your respects, almost by fiat, as if a spell had been cast.
“Allow me to remain beyond these curtains like so. Forgive my rudeness, conversing thus without showing my face,” she said. If anything, though, it must’ve been out of consideration for me─of course it was. If I was feeling this way with a curtain between us, speaking face to face was too much for me. Unable to endure my own worthlessness, we couldn’t carry on any conversation─even on one knee, I was managing to be myself only because I knew Shinobu Oshino, knew Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade as a vampire.
Who knew what I might be doing in the moment otherwise? Obviously, as a human, she didn’t live in my shadow, but I saw why she lived alone on the outskirts of town. Exuding this kind of nobility just anywhere simply wouldn’t do. No wonder she resided in quiet seclusion in this world, even if this grand castle belied that expression.
This explained why Miss Hachikuji and Miss Serpent weren’t familiar with her… Did Ononoki know simply because she was an expert? No, maybe her investigation turned it up─I’d ask her about that later. I bet she was already plenty satisfied seeing me kneel the moment we met; she’d probably let me know.
For now, I needed to talk to Shinobu. As intimidating as the prospect was─
“It seems as though you have come from another world. Sir Araragi, from another world… To wit, you are the same, yet different from the personage I’ve come to know. Is that correct?”
“Y-Yes.”
It took everything I had just to nod. There wasn’t even a mirror around, but my stomach was turning inside out.
She’d called this world’s Koyomi Araragi a personage… Between this, trying to take off Ononoki’s pants, and heeding Oikura’s pleas, I couldn’t get any read on what he was like.
That’s who I was inside? Not Ogi?
“Fate has brought us together, and I interact with another world. I would love for us to speak at length over tea but fear that there is no time─Sir Araragi. Pray describe your predicament in a fashion that even I may understand. Though you see me as an untrusted stranger, met for but the first time, put your faith in me. I offer no guarantee but would yet be of use.”
“O-Okay,” I nodded without a second thought.
I’d obliged a dying vampire last spring break, but felt even more coerced now─no, that’s not the right word.
I wanted to serve her of my own free will.
How unbelievably dangerous.
This actually seemed to surpass being flipped or turned inside out, she felt like an altogether different person… That little girl carried this inside of her?
Her self-image was way too exalted.
This was no time for jabs, though, and the woman before me wasn’t to blame. I did as she requested and described the chain of events since the morning, in even more precise detail than I’d just done for Ononoki. I also took the opportunity to sketch out the other world─I fought off the urge to convey everything about it to her noble presence, and instead kept it to a sketch, but that wasn’t thanks to any feat of self-restraint. I simply didn’t dare tell her that in this other world, she was a little girl who seemed happy spending her life eating donuts and lazing around all day.
Her being a vampire in that other world, though. I couldn’t hide that one.
But even as I talked, a cooler part of my head determined that this Shinobu Oshino─milady Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade could never aid my lowly self. Noble or grand, a human is still a human. She was hardly a “fellow” human, but human all the same.
Shinobu could open a gate to another dimension even as a little girl because she was a vampire─the person before me, a human, wouldn’t have that skill.
When Ononoki offered to take me to Shinobu, I didn’t assume it meant an immediate solution, and my prediction seemed to have hit the mark… I could converse like this and seek her advice, but how could she, nothing but a human, succeed where not one but two gods had failed?
Well… That was no reason to cast aside someone’s good favor, and simply speaking to her might make me feel better.
Though I wondered─princess had slipped something in about there being no time. What could that mean? I’d prepared myself for a long and drawn-out struggle… Was it just that she had plans after this?
Wondering, and kneeling the whole time, I finished my story.
“Thank you kindly. You have come from a very interesting world,” princess shared her thoughts. She really did seem pleased, and perhaps wasn’t just being polite.
I felt like some kind of adventurer returning from a long journey to report his experiences to a noblewoman─maybe I’d be sent back with a few gold pieces as a reward.
Still. An interesting world, huh?
Miss Hachikuji and Miss Serpent had what you might call the composure that came with being a god and showed close to no interest in my world, but yes, it was “another world” for this one’s inhabitants. Endlessly interesting to a human, especially if you lived all alone in a castle.
“Our world must seem counterfeit to one such as you─still, to hear that I am a vampire. Truly, how interesting it would be, to be a demon.”
“…”
It felt rude not to respond, but what was I to say? I couldn’t reply with a casual Yup, it’s nice being a vampire.