After classes ended for the week, Ginka stopped by her usual supermarket. As she headed toward the produce section, she scrolled through recipes on her phone while thinking about what to eat.
How many years has it been since I’ve cooked in a kitchen? While I was active as a vampire hunter, I generally ate out or had prepackaged meals. I’m looking forward to cooking, but it feels like a hassle at the same time... Now that I think about it, can Moriki cook?
“A friend...”
Moriki had called her that when Ginka had escorted her home.
Ginka had fought bloody battles with vampires one after another, while Moriki had lived a fulfilling life as a high school student. Their upbringings, personalities, and hobbies were all completely different, so it was difficult for Ginka to imagine them ever becoming friends.
Am I even qualified to be her friend in the first place? She shook her head to clear away that idle thought. For now, she needed to concentrate on finding out why that retainer had appeared. I’ve let my guard down since returning to Japan. As the only vampire hunter in this area, I should be more alert and vigilant.
Neither headquarters nor the Japan branch had yet to respond to Ginka’s report. She had heard that the alliance’s organizational capabilities had dwindled since their war ended, but she had never expected it to be this bad.
The best course of action would be to continue protecting Moriki and wait for the enemy to go after her temptation blood. Ginka thought it was a haphazard plan at best, and she wasn’t fond of using an ordinary civilian as bait, but this was the only option available right now.
When Ginka had informed Moriki she would accompany her as a guard on their days off from school, Moriki had smiled and readily consented. “Then let’s go downtown on our next day off!” she had said.
Supposedly, the goal of such a trip would be to purchase clothing. Ginka had suggested simply making such purchases online, but Moriki had said it was necessary to try the items on in person. Ginka had been pressured into agreeing to go on said trip, but there was no real need to guard Moriki during the day.
That was quite the pointless promise... As regret swirled inside her, Ginka placed a cabbage in her shopping basket. She caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror attached to a pillar in the store. Her mouth looked relaxed and distorted, almost as if she were—
As she hurriedly corrected her expression, she swiftly moved toward the meat section.
Th-Thank goodness none of my acquaintances saw that...
✦ ✦ ✦
It was early afternoon, and the weather was nice and sunny with a few clouds overhead. It was warm enough to go outside without a jacket, which made it a perfect day for a shopping trip.
Ruka got to their meeting spot in front of the station and pulled out her eyeshadow palette, the one with the mirror in the cover, to check her makeup. She’d gone all out today, with extra-thick eyelashes and flashy highlights right under her eyes. She hadn’t slacked on her clothes either—she wore a brand-new cap and a high-collared tulle top under a leopard-print bustier, plus a high-waisted skort to show off some serious leg.
These are pretty short... But this is the least I can do to not look like garbage next to a beauty like her. I don’t wanna die from embarrassment.
Ruka took one more look in her mirror and gave herself a satisfied nod just before she spotted Shijunana coming her way.
“My apologies for the wait,” said Shijunana. She was wearing a plain-looking hoodie and jeans, an outfit that gave her a casual and relaxed boyish vibe, but she still had her usual black gloves and sparkling jewelry on.
She said she doesn’t have a lot of clothes, but does that matter when she makes any outfit look good? Seriously, that inseam is insane. Is she an edited pic or something?
“Those legs are totally unfair. Lemme have some of that length!”
“I cannot share the length of my legs with you.”
Oof, if she’s gonna shoot down my jokes, I should probably give up on acting silly. But there’s something I gotta say before we get going.
“’Kay, starting over... I got my paycheck, so today’s on me!” Ruka announced, and she threw in a peace sign too.
Shijunana tilted her head. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“I owe you my life, so I gotta pay you back somehow.”
“That is wholly unnecessary. I only did what was natural as a hunter.”
“Heh, thought you’d say that.”
“What...?” Shijunana furrowed her brow.
Ruka cleared her throat and said, with a serious look on her face, “It isn’t just because I owe you my life. It’s also a welcoming gift for you, Shijunana-san. At times like this, the polite thing to do is to accept without saying anything else.”
“Is that so...?”
“Yup, sure is!”
I haven’t known her for very long, but that whole talk we had about those precept things made one thing super clear: She respects rules.
That helped Ruka come up with using manners to talk Shijunana into doing stuff, and it was seriously effective.
Shijunana sighed. “If I decide you are spending too much, I will put an immediate stop to this.”
“Aw yeah, pledget!” Ruka pumped her fist in the air.
“What does ‘pledget’ mean, exactly?” Shijunana asked.
“It’s, um, y’know, that thing... You get the, uh... It’s like a promise?”
“Is it a shortened form of ‘getting a pledge,’ perhaps?”
“Yeah, that! Getting a pledget!”
“Moriki... Are you not familiar with the word ‘pledge’?”
“Hee hee!”
“Don’t just laugh it off.”
Oops. Made her mad!
Ruka tried to escape by running into the station. But with her long legs, Shijunana caught up right away.
The way the train shook and swayed whenever it rounded a curb made Ruka feel more and more like they were really heading into the city. There were department stores and clothing shops where she lived, but what they sold just couldn’t compare to what downtown had to offer. That was why trips like this got her way more excited than shopping in her own neighborhood. Even though this was officially a welcome present for Shijunana, Ruka wanted to buy some stuff for herself too. She’d already made sure that would be okay with her classmate.
“By the way, what do you do on your days off?” Ruka asked.
Shijunana stared at the ceiling as she pondered the question. “On days off...? Training, generally, or sleeping. I spent the past six months in the mountains, and rest was insufficient during that time.”
“In the mountains? Like camping...?”
“I would say it was closer to a survival mission. It was necessary to hide in the mountains as part of our war. I needed to keep moving in order to secure food and search for the enemy, so I was unable to properly train or sleep.”
“Wh-Why’d you have to do all that?”
Shijunana pulled her phone out of the pocket of her jeans and started messing with it—apparently her black gloves worked just fine on a touch screen. She handed it to Ruka, who recognized the same vampire search app that had been installed on her own phone.
“As I mentioned before, this application uses electronic devices that act like sonar in order to determine the location of vampires and retainers as well as hunters utilizing exoforce. That means it is useless in areas without electronics. Our enemies learned of the app and its flaw, though we are unsure when, and they fled to remote mountains and uninhabited islands to avoid detection. Naturally, we hunters pursued them.”
Shijunana summoned a little exoforce at the tip of her finger and tapped on the screen. A fast-moving blue dot showed up in the app. “The mountains were even more frightening than our enemies sometimes. I still occasionally have nightmares about when I almost froze to death or when we had to fight a bear.”
“A bear...? Wait, like an actual, IRL bear?”
“Indeed. The animal was as massive as a car and moved with unbelievable agility... It took three of us to emerge victorious.”
“Of course you won.” Ruka smirked a little, but her eye was drawn to the faint mark on Shijunana’s face. “Did that scar come from the bear?”
Shijunana stroked her cheek like she was remembering something. “No, this came from my battle with the enemy. One of them had poison claws. I made a mistake and was slashed for it. Though I recovered from the poison, a faint scar remained.”
“Why not cover it up with concealer?”
Shijunana’s lips twisted into a sad smile. “This scar is a part of me—proof of the battles I fought. I find it unsightly, and I would not mind if it were gone, but I cannot bring myself to cover it up.”
Ruka gripped her shoulder strap. I said something I shouldn’t have... She had rudely stomped onto something sacred to Shijunana and trampled all over it. Meiri and Hinaru were always telling her to watch out because her sense of distance was completely out of whack, and now she’d gone and done something like this.
“Hey, I’m really sorr—”
“But what is ‘concealer’ a short version of, exactly?”
“Huh...?” What is this girl even saying? That comment from Shijunana was so wild that Ruka forgot she’d been apologizing.
“VH is vampire hunter, and pledget is to get a pledge. So concealer...means contact sealing, perhaps? No, that doesn’t sound right...”
She was so off the mark that Ruka had to frown. Seriously, what the hell is she saying?
“Sh-Shijunana-san, do you...not know what concealer is?”
“That’s correct.”
“Whaaaaa?!” Ruka couldn’t believe it. Was this really possible in the twenty-first century?
“Moriki, you will cause trouble for others by being so loud in the train,” Shijunana warned.
Ruka ignored that. She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a bottle of concealer from her makeup pouch and held it in front of Shijunana’s face. “This is concealer! You use it to cover up blemishes and dark spots under your eyes!”
“Ah, some form of makeup...?”
“You seriously don’t know it?”
“I do not. I have no experience with such things.”
“W-Wait, you don’t mean...”
Ruka opened her eyes wide and studied Shijunana’s beautiful face. She had silver hair, eyebrows, and lashes. Her nose had a really nice shape, her lips looked soft, and her smooth, perfect skin...