The Amphisbaena (4 page)

“Like hell I’m strippin’! In the first place, it’s stupid for me to be the only one wearing something like that!”

“…What’s that? If it’s not just you, then it’s all right?” Asagi asked her question with a suddenly serious look. As if taunting the silent Kojou, Asagi pointed at an outfit in one of the boxes.

“If that’s so, I’ll change my clothes to match yours. No complaints then, right?”

“Er, no, I think I still have some complaints regardless, but…”

“Yeah, yeah. If we’re changing clothes, you turn thataway.”

With Kojou’s objection overruled, Asagi undid the necktie of her uniform. She proceeded to put her hand over the buttons of her top. Kojou hastily turned his back toward her.

In the quiet art classroom after school hours, the rustling sounds of Asagi changing clothes echoed all about. Kojou forced himself to make imaginary free throws inside his own mind in an effort to fend off the sounds that stimulated his baser instincts.

After several exceedingly long minutes, Asagi said, “It’s all right now,” giving his shoulder a pat. “Now you can’t complain, can you?”

Kojou turned and looked; right before his eyes, Asagi was wearing a family restaurant waitress’s uniform. The outfit served to exaggerate the swell of her breasts, with a frilly apron on top. It came with knee-high socks and an unnaturally short skirt. It wasn’t that the outfit was especially exposing, but the unusual situation—a classmate wearing clothes like this on school grounds—bewildered him.

“…Why a waitress outfit?”

“I thought you’d like it, Kojou. You’re always staring at the waitresses at family restaurants, after all.”

“I am not!”

“Now, now. I’ve given you quite a freebie, so it’s time you changed clothes, too. Here.”

“You’ve totally forgotten why we’re doing this in the first place, haven’t you? What happened to your artistic dilemma?”

Steadily complaining all the while, Kojou peered into the cardboard box. He pulled out the sanest outfit he could see, which turned out to be the butler outfit. Asagi regarded it with great interest before turning toward the wall. Kojou yielded to the inevitable and began to change. Fortunately, the size wasn’t a problem. Apparently the drama club outfits had been made to have a certain degree of flexibility.

“Yeah, this actually looks pretty good on you, Kojou.” Looking at Kojou after he’d changed, Asagi smiled with what looked like admiration.

“That doesn’t make me the slightest bit happy.”

Looking at his own reflection in the mirror, Kojou’s face scowled in irritation. The “butler” clothes were black with a tailcoat. Whether Kojou liked it or not, he looked like a classical vampire. He was the spitting image of the terrifying demons that had terrorized mankind in the great war before the Holy Ground Treaty was signed.

Even as this fact made Kojou distinctly uncomfortable, he muttered, “There, happy now?” as he checked with Asagi.

…Click!

His eyes met Asagi’s as her stupidly high-end smartphone took a picture of him.

“Wh-what are you taking a picture for?!”

“Mm? Reference photo for my sketch.”

“Stop, delete that. Delete it right now!” Kojou shouted in a shrill voice. Here he was, after classes had ended, wearing a butler outfit, and
not
preparing for some kind of school festival. Plus, he had that weird “makeup” on his face; he thought it was a fairly painful situation to be in.

But for her part, Asagi filled the air with the sounds of her camera shutter on full rapid-fire.

“It’s all right. It’s not like I’m gonna send them all to everyone in class.”

“That’s exactly what I don’t trust you not to do! Aw, crap…!”

In a desperate counterattack, Kojou whipped out his own cell phone and photographed Asagi in her waitress outfit. Seeing that, Asagi let out a cute yelp. Apparently even she had some sense of shame.

“Hold on… Why do I have to get photographed too?! It’s indecent.”

“It’s not indecent. These are reasonable countermeasures!”

“Oh, good grief…!”

Asagi made a rough, seemingly defiant sigh. Suddenly, she stood right beside Kojou and wrapped herself around his arm. She proceeded to snuggle against him while getting both of them into the camera frame.

Click
, the shutter reverberated. The two-shot was displayed on the smartphone’s screen: a butler and a waitress. It was a bizarre situation, but the image was picture-perfect.

“And? Got it out of your system?

“…Well, it’s not really a matter of getting it out of my system or not…,” Kojou said in a tired voice as he glared at the oddly satisfied Asagi.

Right after, a long chime rang throughout the school. The school day had come to an end.

Asagi scratched her head in disappointment as she gazed at the blank sketchbook. “It’s not finished at all. It’s all because you were dragging your feet.”

“This is my fault?! It’s ’cause you pulled out all that weird stuff!”

“This is bad… Mm, and I have something I need to do tomorrow,” Asagi murmured, seriously conflicted for once. Of course, Kojou felt somewhat guilty, too.

After all, the whole reason Asagi had to do extra homework was because she’d gotten wrapped up in the terror incident; it was no fault of hers whatsoever. Besides, Kojou himself was hardly unrelated to that incident.

“…So how about we do it on the weekend?”

Kojou made the proposal, lacking other options. Either way, it wouldn’t be easy to finish a likeness in just the time after class was dismissed. Besides, if the work was being done at Kojou’s apartment, he wouldn’t have to worry about dressing up in weird outfits.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. My mom said she probably wasn’t gonna be back for a while still, and Nagisa has club during the day, so there’s no toes to worry about stepping on.”

“…J-just the two of us, then…?” Asagi murmured in a voice so faint that it was hard to pick up. Kojou felt like he’d committed some kind of fatal mistake, but he couldn’t just say, “Okay, forget it,” at that point. “All right, sorry, but thanks. Saturday, okay?” Asagi said as she looked up at Kojou, a smile all over her face. And so it was.

Having returned the key to the art classroom and parted ways with Asagi, Kojou was standing in front of a washstand along the corridor. He was there to wash off the doodles Asagi had drawn on his face.

“Aww, crap… There, finally got it off…”

Having finished taking pains to wash the stubborn grime off his face, Kojou exhaled in relief.

As he stood like that, a towel was thrust in front of him. It was a clean-looking, pale blue towel.

“Here.”

“Ahh, thanks.”

On reflex, Kojou responded to stimulus and wiped off his dripping wet face.

“…Wait, Himeragi?!”

Kojou froze in place when he realized who had handed him the towel.

Yukina, in her middle school uniform with her guitar case over her back, was standing right beside Kojou without letting her presence be felt. Kojou had absolutely no idea how long she’d been standing right there.

“What have you been doing at this late hour, senpai?” Yukina asked in a composed tone. She was in the shadow of a pillar, making her expression impossible to read. Yukina’s voice was gentle, but that only served to rattle Kojou all the more.

The root of Kojou’s defeat was that Asagi had so filled his head that he’d completely forgotten that Yukina existed. She, a self-styled watcher,
i.e., a government-approved stalker, would of course have been monitoring his movements after class.

“Ah… Er, sorry, a classmate had me help her with some art homework until just earlier there.”

Kojou maintained a cool composure as he made an awkward laugh. Since he had no idea just how much of the situation Yukina grasped, making a clumsy apology would be a fatal mistake.

“It’s nothing you need to apologize for, although…”

Yukina let out a soft sigh as she accepted the towel back from Kojou.

“…did the homework you are referring to include having Aiba dress up in a waitress outfit and taking pictures of her?”

“So you
were
watching?!”

“I
am
your watcher, after all,” Yukina said as if stating the obvious. Her voice had its usual clear tone, but Kojou could not fail to pick up the echo of faint dissatisfaction in it. Although Yukina’s moods were difficult to read at a glance, Kojou had somewhat improved his grasp of them to a certain degree from having spent a lot of time with her over the last month.

“Then, you get it already. That was Asagi playing a prank; all she really asked me to do was model for a likeness.”

“…For a prank, you both seemed to be enjoying yourselves a great deal,” Yukina muttered with a sullen expression. Kojou was a bit thrown off at how she seemed faintly envious.

“Huh?”

“No, nothing at all.”

“R-right… Well, I’m kinda glad. Actually, I had something to talk to you about, Himeragi.”

Judging that Yukina had nominally accepted the situation, Kojou forced a change of subject. Yukina glared at Kojou with a guarded expression.

“Something to talk about, meaning Aiba?”

“Well… Well, it’s kind of about her and kind of about me.”

“Ah?”

“Err, I mean… I was thinking that I should tell Asagi, even if it’s just her, about what I am now…”

Yukina’s expression grew even sharper at Kojou’s vague outline.

“The fact that you…lust after Aiba?”

“…L-lust?”

Kojou looked back at Yukina, flabbergasted at hearing the unexpected word. Realizing she misunderstood, he hastily shook his head.

“No, not that. I’m not talking about wanting to suck Asagi’s blood or something…”

“What are you talking about, then?”

“I’m talking about telling Asagi that I’m really a vampire!”

“Ahh…”

Yukina’s strength seemed to leave her as she indicated she understood.

To her, Kojou had been the vampire she’d been watching since the moment they’d met. At this point, even if he declared he was coming out of the closet, maybe it just didn’t ring a bell with her.

Thanks to Yukina’s odd reaction, Kojou felt embarrassed somehow as he continued.

“Going on deceiving Asagi like this feels a bit…embarrassing, rotten maybe?”

“Mm…” Yukina nodded vaguely. “It isn’t that I don’t understand how you feel, but why the sudden rush now?”

Of course, he did not give the honest reply—“because she kissed me”—and voiced a more legitimate excuse. “W-well… I mean, you know, it’d be bad if she got wrapped up in some danger she knows nothing about. Like the kind of thing that just happened recently.”

“Ah, I see…”

“The thing is, even if I avoid her, that doesn’t mean it isn’t gonna happen, anyway.” Kojou laughed a dry, self-deprecating laugh.

Not that vampires were any kind of rarity on Itogami Island, but your friend being an unregistered demon who’d been hiding it from you was a different story altogether. The chances of Asagi entering a wild rage weren’t exactly low.

“It’s just, if I expose what I am, that affects where you stand, too, Himeragi. So, I thought it was best to discuss it with you first.”

With a meek expression, Kojou glanced to check Yukina’s reaction. However, for some reason, Yukina looked like her mind was somewhere else as she nodded.

“I…see… Revealing to Aiba…a secret known only to me…”

“Eh?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing at all.”

Yukina lifted her head and straightened her posture.

“There’s no reason to be concerned for me. In the first place, I have nothing to hide in public.”

“R-right.”

Come to think of it, Yukina was a nationally accredited Attack Mage, and the organization she was assigned to was a publicly acknowledged government agency. It wasn’t something to just wave around willy-nilly, but she wouldn’t be inconvenienced if exposed. If anything, the reason for her to hide her identity was out of consideration for Kojou’s position.

“The problem isn’t me; it’s Nagisa.”

“Yeah…”

Kojou clutched his head as Yukina calmly pointed the fact out.

Kojou’s little sister… Nagisa Akatsuki, was afraid of demons even though she lived in a Demon Sanctuary. She had an acute case of demon phobia. The cause was having been attacked by demons in the past, suffering grave, near-fatal wounds in the process.

That was why Kojou had to hide his true nature from her.

If Nagisa knew the truth, not only would Kojou and Nagisa be unable to live together as brother and sister anymore: worst case, it would inflict severe mental damage upon her.

If he exposed his secret to Asagi, that naturally increased the danger that it would reach Nagisa’s ears. No doubt that’s precisely what worried Yukina.

“Aww…crap, the hell should I do…?”

As Kojou exhaled weakly, he bent over a windowsill along the corridor.

He could see the middle school yard beneath his vantage point, illuminated by the setting sun. Kojou raised his eyebrows with a “hm” sound as, right in the shadow of a building of another campus, he spotted the sight of a familiar schoolgirl.

“Nagisa…?”

The small silhouette was clad in a middle school uniform. Her long hair was, typically for her, tied neatly back. Though not quite a case of “speak of the devil and he appears,” there stood Kojou’s little sister, the topic of their conversation.

And right beside her stood a boy wearing a sports club jersey.

The moment he beheld the scene, Kojou’s mind went blank with anger and impatience.

“…Bastard!”

“Senpai?! W-wait, please! What do you think you’re doing?!”

Yukina hastily pulled Kojou back before he leaped down from the window…on the building’s fourth floor.

Kojou’s face twitched as he looked back at Yukina, his feet still on the windowsill.

“Wh-what’s with… Why is there a guy with Nagisa?!”

“…That’s a boy from our class, isn’t it?” Yukina answered the first of his questions with a composed tone. Yukina and Nagisa were middle school classmates; in other words, the schoolboy in the yard was from the same class as Nagisa.

“Come to mention it, I think I’ve seen him before… His name’s Takashimizu or something.”

Kojou muttered as he tracked down the vague memory. It was a face he’d seen many times on the grounds after classes when he was still in the basketball club. He was a soccer club member with tidy looks; Kojou recalled he was popular with the girls, too.

What the hell does a guy like that want with Nagisa?
thought Kojou, losing his presence of mind.

“Ah…a letter.”

“Wha—?!” Kojou’s breath caught at Yukina’s blunt murmur. When he looked, Takashimizu was indeed holding a sealed white letter in his hand.

“Wh-wh-what’s some guy in the same class handing Nagisa a letter for in a place with no one else around?!”

“Not that it is my business…” Yukina slumped with a look of concern. She was apparently overwhelmed by Kojou’s alarmingly threatening attitude. “But is it not proper to hand over that kind of letter in a place away from prying eyes?”

“What do you mean, ‘that kind of letter’…?!”

“Is that not a love letter?”

The instant he heard Yukina’s words, strength drained from Kojou’s entire body. A boy from the same class was handing Nagisa a love letter.

That’s crazy, there’s no way
, Kojou told himself. Nagisa was still a child! It was practically yesterday she still had a knapsack on her back. She believed in Santa Claus until fifth grade, for God’s sake.

“Um, er… Senpai?” Yukina nervously called out to Kojou as he continued mumbling to himself like a madman.

A hollow smile came over Kojou’s face.