Chapter 5: Let’s Visit the Noro Residence

Kyoya was enraged.

He brought an arm down hard enough to split his bed down the middle.

The bookshelf was in bad shape, too. Kyoya’s rampage had left it in pieces.

He was strong enough to do that, and fast, too. That man shouldn’t have been able to beat him. He had dominated that entire group of delinquents, yet they had been completely helpless before that man. That friend of Aiko’s...

He had been just about to grab the man when he had suddenly tumbled to the ground. He couldn’t even remember what the man had done to him.

Somehow, that man had taken out all of his slaves.

The sharing of sensation was a vampiric ability that Kyoya had only recently mastered. He could suck someone’s blood and experience what they experienced. He had seen firsthand, through the eyes of his slaves, that man taking out all of them in the abandoned hospital.

Those slaves were now useless to him. The injuries weren’t that bad, but they weren’t going to be able to fight that man after he had demonstrated such overwhelming power.

“Damn you!” Kyoya shouted. The one-sided defeat burned in his mind.

Eriko had taken Kyoya back to the house following his failure, then left him to take out his anger on his room. Before long, midnight had fallen.

“How long are you going to stay at that?” Eriko asked as she returned. She was carrying a coffin over her shoulders.

“I heard that sleeping in a coffin can increase your powers even more,” she added. With a grunt of effort, she deposited the coffin on the floor.

“What happened? Why didn’t my charm work?” Kyoya snapped at Eriko.

“Charm” was another vampiric power that Kyoya had awakened. It let him hypnotize a member of the other sex into becoming his slave. It wasn’t a lasting domination like sucking blood might be, but it should have been enough for him to take the upper hand in that fight.

Kyoya had tried to charm the girl with that man. He was sure it had activated, but the effect had never manifested.

“It clearly isn’t foolproof.” Eriko sat down on the broken bed and took a notebook out of her bag. She hadn’t told Kyoya where she’d gotten it, but it seemed to contain secrets about vampires not known by the wider world.

At least, that was what she had said. Kyoya had never seen what was in it himself.

“Ah,” she said. “It says it doesn’t work on religious fanatics, so you shouldn’t rely on it too much.”

You couldn’t know who was a fanatic just by looking at them, so caution would be the order of the day. Kyoya had learned that in the most painful way possible.

“By the way, why did you attack that boy?” she asked. “It seemed quite an imprudent action.”

Because he had defeated all his servants. Because he wanted to suck the blood of the girl who was with him. A number of reasons floated up in Kyoya’s mind, but he chose to keep them to himself.

“Well, if you don’t want to tell me, that’s just fine,” Eriko continued. “But be careful in the future. I hear there are some vampire hunters around.”

“I have no intention of skulking around in the shadows!” Kyoya snapped. But he also realized that indiscriminately attacking people would cause trouble in the long run. “Targeting a specific community seems like a fine enough idea, but those hoodlums seem rather hard to keep under control, don’t they?”

Kyoya had enslaved a group of gang bosses by sucking their blood, assuming that through them, he could take control of their organization. But the underlings in the abandoned hospital had kidnapped that girl on their own accord to try to suck her blood. In other words, those whose blood his generals drank — his “grandchildren” — were not under Kyoya’s control. It could be a sign of Kyoya’s own weakness, or a fixed limitation on the ability itself.

“I won’t use them anymore... but by coincidence, it did bear some fruit,” he said. “Those anthromorphs.” Some of those that Kyoya had drunk blood from had turned out to have the ability to turn into half-animal creatures, who had proved stronger than his other half-vampiric slaves.

“Oh, those. There’s something about that, too... retainers, I believe they’re called. It seems there are ghouls, witches, and werewolves. Some people have that potential inside them, but they aren’t always aware of it. I wonder how rare they are...” Eriko said as she flipped through the pages.

“They’ll be useful in my army,” Kyoya said.

“There doesn’t seem to be any way to pick them out of a crowd, so you’ll be reliant on luck, though,” Eriko commented. “So? What comes next?”

“I think I’ll take over my school first.” The school was the closest sealed environment Kyoya knew of. If he got the teachers under his control, the students would soon follow.

“Is this a side effect? It affects not just the body, but the mind, as well?” Eriko spoke mockingly.

“Effects on the mind?” Kyoya asked. “I guess there have been. But I think this is just the real me showing itself.”

Drinking blood had definitely affected his mind. He no longer had any scruples about attacking people. The ecstasy of exerting his will on others was a drug he couldn’t get enough of. More than anything, he no longer hesitated in indulging in his own desires. That was the reason he had attacked that man, too.

“The school, then... very well. Speaking of which... world domination, was it? I don’t intend to go with you that far.”

Kyoya couldn’t blame her; it must have sounded like big talk. He hadn’t actually accomplished anything yet.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “If I can get the school in my grasp, I’m sure I can use it to some kind of end.”

“So it’s practice?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, do as you wish. Oh, that’s right. Make sure you count how many whose blood you’ve drank. It’s important to keep a handle on your slaves.” With that, Eriko stood up and left the room with a casual wave of her hand.

Now alone, Kyoya walked up to the window and gazed outside.

The forest stretched out beneath him. The forest that made up the Noro family’s land had sunk into darkness, without a single point of light to illuminate it.

In it, Kyoya visualized his own empire of darkness.

✽✽✽✽✽

It was a shrine to Susano-o Mikoto.

Mutsuko hadn’t know that when she’d chosen it for its size and proximity to their house, but she had been delighted by the coincidence.

Sharp noises rang out around the back of that shrine: the sound of Yuichi’s punches ripping through the air, over and over again.

It was four o’clock in the morning. It was still dark out. Yuichi was dressed in a track suit, going through his martial arts lessons.

The practice was simple. Strike out with the right arm while stepping forward with the right leg. Bring the arm and leg back, do the same with the left.

Repeating that motion over and over again carried him slowly forward, and after a certain distance, he turned, and did the same in the other direction.

Originally, he had practiced on the lawn at their house, but over the course of years, the stamping had beaten the ground down so hard that no grass would grow in it.

His family lived in an imported house, with a stylish design that his mother had chosen. As one might expect, then, she was quite fastidious about the appearance of the lawn and the exterior.

His usually easygoing mother had fallen into a deep sorrow when she had learned that their lawn was now barren. They had quickly worked to dig it up, change the dirt, and replenish the grass, but the normally willful Mutsuko had felt a rare sense of remorse about what she had done. Thus, they no longer trained at home.

Instead, Mutsuko went looking for large, isolated spaces nearby to run his training regimen, and they changed the location periodically to keep a repeat of that incident from happening.

Yuichi and Mutsuko were currently the only ones at the shrine. Mutsuko was in a track suit as well, sitting on a rucksack that converted into a chair and watching Yuichi’s movements.

If she saw any issues, she’d point them out, but lately she hadn’t needed to. It was mostly up to Yuichi to pay attention to how his body felt.

“Hey. Hey!” Mutsuko spoke up, clearly bored with just sitting.

“What?” Yuichi replied as his fist ripped through the air.

“I hear the shrine owner has a daughter! I wonder if she’s a miko!”

“A miko? I don’t see any reason why she would be just because she’s the owner’s daughter.” It seemed an extremely shallow thought to Yuichi.

“Oh? I think they usually hire family to be miko. Well, I guess sometimes they recruit from the employment office, too.”

“Why would anyone recruit a miko from an employment office?” Yuichi asked, focusing fervently on how little he cared.

“Maybe she’s secretly watching you practice, waiting to bring you some provisions!”

“I really hope not!” He was doing this in secret because he didn’t like people watching him. He didn’t like the thought of anyone finding him.

Yuichi looked out over the quiet forest behind the shrine. It was full of dead trees. This, too, was the result of Yuichi’s overzealous practice, a type of training where you went around striking a tree, pretending it was an opponent. Many of them had gone barren as a result.

“Ah, look, someone’s there!” Mutsuko said, pointing to the forest.

“What?” Yuichi quickly stopped training and looked in the direction Mutsuko was pointing. Someone was definitely approaching from out of the twilight forest.

Yuichi’s first instinct was to run, but he stopped as he recognized the face. “Oh, it’s just you. Don’t scare me like that.”

Indeed, it was Natsuki Takeuchi. She was wearing a skintight black leotard. It was certainly a provocative mode of dress, but to Yuichi, who knew she was a serial killer, it was equally evocative of an assassin’s garb.

“Hey, can’t you do something about that outfit?” he asked. “I know it’s probably easy to move in, but...”

Natsuki came around from time to time to join Yuichi in his training, and this was what she usually wore. It hugged her body lines so tightly that Yuichi had a hard time knowing where to look.

“What’s the big deal? She looks like Orin the Fugitive! It’s cool!” As usual, Mutsuko’s examples didn’t make things any clearer to Yuichi.

“If it distracts you, Sakaki, then it’s all the more to my advantage,” Natsuki said. It seemed she was wearing it specifically for Yuichi’s benefit. “Now, shall we fight?” she added, cutting quickly to the chase.

“Sure, but show a little mercy, okay?”

“I can’t. I fight on killing instinct alone.” Immediately, Natsuki leaped at him, extending her fingers to aim straight for his eyes.

There was not an ounce of hesitation in her movements. She was moving so fast that if her fingers struck his eyes, they would pierce right through to his brain.

Most people would hurt themselves trying to attack the eyes like that, but Natsuki wasn’t most people.

Fortunately for Yuichi, he could see the attack coming a mile away. He brushed her arm aside with his own to throw the attack off target, then got around beside her with a diagonal step, and struck lightly with his palm at her exposed side.

Natsuki, annoyed, began a rapid flurry of attacks, but Yuichi dodged each one. He could easily predict Natsuki’s instinctive attack patterns by now, and keep her at bay even without furukami. She was far too telegraphed in her movements.

After a bit of similar back-and-forth, Natsuki collapsed on the ground. Her expression was one of perfect satisfaction, suggesting she had gotten whatever she needed from the combat.

It seemed that being able to move with killing intent was enough to sate Natsuki’s murderous urges. So as long as there was someone who could really dodge her blows, she could do without the kill itself. And right now, Yuichi was the only one who fit the bill.

“This is a pretty basic thing, but you should really stop fighting with your body lines exposed,” he told her. “It makes it really clear how your muscles are moving. You know why people wear hakama in Japanese martial arts? It’s there to mask their movements.”

“I see. You’re running your eyes all over my body, are you?” Natsuki, on the ground, hugged herself as if to hide her chest. It was a bit of a theatrical gesture.

“Hey, don’t put it that way. You said it yourself: you can’t fight someone if you don’t look at them. It’s communication, right?” Yuichi decided to lay off the advice, though. He really didn’t want her to get any better at fighting.

It was Friday after class, six days after Yuichi’s shopping trip with Aiko. He came to the survival club room to find the usual members already assembled.

“Okay! Regarding our subject from last week, the summer training camp... Any new thoughts?” Mutsuko proclaimed in her usual bold tones, standing in front of the whiteboard.

Their provision that money was no object hadn’t given Yuichi any new ideas. While he remained silent, Aiko raised her hand and gave the first suggestion.

“Um, we have a summer house near the beach. Could we go there?” Aiko turned to face Yuichi. “It’s okay if it’s just using a summer house, right?”

He figured she was asking him because he was the one who had objected to using her family’s money for the trip.

“If it’s something you already have, I guess it’s okay to use it,” he said. It still felt like relying on her family’s wealth, but it was different from just having her pay for everything.

“I like it!” Mutsuko said gaily. “Going to a wealthy friend’s summer house is such a trope!”

Yuichi had no idea what sort of trope she was talking about.

Mutsuko wrote “Noro’s summer house” on the whiteboard, which still contained the other suggestions from last time.

“The Unmarked Land,” Natsuki whispered. Another strange location. “A region outside the jurisdiction of Japanese law. A city of inhuman monsters, where you must keep your wits about you at all times.”

“You can do that one without me!” Yuichi objected forcefully. There was no way he was going to a place like that.

“Is this different from the junkyard you mentioned before?” Mutsuko asked with intense curiosity.

“The Unmarked Land is out in the Pacific Ocean. It’s pretty far away, so it might be hard to get there. You might need to charter a helicopter.”

“I see. So we’d need the money for that, huh?” Mutsuko nodded and wrote “the Unmarked Land” on the whiteboard. “What about you, Orihara? Have you found us a way to get to an isekai?”

“What? Are we seriously discussing the isekai thing?” Yuichi asked Mutsuko, just to be sure. The idea of offering up an isekai for a training camp discussion just seemed bizarre.

“We spend a lot of time talking about isekai, so we really should visit one sometime!” she said cheerfully.

“You make it sound as easy as visiting a public bath!” Yuichi was growing more and more uneasy. He was starting to believe they really did exist.

“Um, what about the Mayoiga?” Kanako asked.

The Mayoiga — in other words, the House of the Lost — was a legendary house hidden in the mountains that was said to appear before lost travelers and bring them riches. You could never visit it twice, so some people thought it existed in an isekai. That must be why Kanako was bringing it up.

“I get it! That’s like an isekai! The Tono area, then?” Mutsuko fell easily into the idea.

Yuichi had a bad feeling about this. Tono was a region in northern Japan with a strong tie to folklore. It seemed a likely place for oni, as well as kappa, tengu, zashiki-warashi, and other forms of mischief.

“Well, I think that’s enough candidates,” Mutsuko said. “We have until summer vacation to decide. So if anyone has any more ideas, let me know!”

The candidates for their training camp filled Yuichi with nothing but anxiety.

“Setting that aside, I think it’s time we started up our normal activities.” As she spoke, Mutsuko wrote on the whiteboard: “Isekai Survival Discussion 4: Psychological Resistance to Killing in an Isekai War.”

It was part of a series.

The second discussion had been “A Developmental Psychology Approach to Learning Isekai Languages”; the third had been “NAISEI: The Strengths and Weaknesses of Crop Rotation.” Yuichi had forgotten most of what they entailed.

Incidentally, NAISEI was a term mocking the use of anachronistically modern knowledge of governance in isekai portal fantasy stories.

“Now, today’s ‘what do I do if I end up in an isekai’ is about war!”

“Now that you mention it, isekai don’t tend to be very peaceful places, do they?” Yuichi thought back on many different isekai fantasy stories he had read. They always had some kind of fighting in them.

“We tend to think of isekai as being less civilized than modern Japan, with a high mortality rate!” Mutsuko said.

“That’s right. I spend a lot of time worried about what I would do if I ended up in a world like that...” Kanako said worriedly.

“You spend a lot of time worried about that?” Yuichi asked. It seemed like a strange thing to spend your time thinking about.

“Yes!” Kanako responded earnestly. “You never know when a portal to an isekai might open!”

She really believed in this stuff, apparently.

“Anyway, it’s possible that an isekai will be rampant with magical creatures and dangerous life forms, but the most dangerous predator is man, right? If you’re in the middle of a war zone, or thrown out onto a battlefield... what would you do, Noro? Could you kill someone?”

“Huh? Me? Probably not...” Aiko said after some thought.

“What if it’s kill-or-be-killed? They’re isekai people. They have nothing to do with you, right?”

“Even so... I don’t think I could.”

“That’s right. That’s probably the answer most people would give!” Mutsuko had likely asked Aiko because she would give the answer she was looking for. If she had asked Natsuki, things would have gotten a bit more complicated. “I think this is rather well-known, but you may not have heard it, so I’ll explain it! The question is: can people kill other people?”

“Well, people kill people all the time,” Yuichi said. “The news is full of stories about wars all over the world, and individual murders, too.”

“Those are exceptions. Well, I guess it happens too often to just call them exceptions, but... For now, let’s take ‘people can’t kill other people’ as our conclusion, and work backwards.”

“Is that really true?” Aiko asked doubtfully.

Yuichi felt the same way.

“Let’s start with this. The discharge rate of firearms from the American army during World War II was between 15 and 20%. Most people couldn’t fire, even when there was an enemy soldier in front of them, which suggests a strong resistance to the idea of killing another human being. They say that even under orders, most soldiers intentionally missed.

“When we think about war, we usually think about soldiers in a berserker frenzy, bloodily tearing through other soldiers, but the truth isn’t really like that. In other words, humans have an instinctive resistance to killing each other. This is something we’re proud of! It’s why we use the word ‘inhumane’ to describe serial killers! We’re saying people who kill people aren’t really human. They’re basically monsters.”

“I agree that it’s something to be proud of, but that’s not very convincing coming from you, Sis!” Yuichi snapped. Given the savage things she tended to spend her time thinking about, and the dangerous ideas she came up with, he couldn’t help but question her talk about the human resistance to killing.

Yuichi cast a glance at Natsuki beside him. She was looking pretty despondent.

“Takeuchi?” Yuichi asked, worried. It wasn’t as if she had chosen to be a slave to her killing urge, after all.

“I’m okay. Don’t worry,” Natsuki responded, though her voice was unusually monotone.

“And if you think that’s just because we were more culturally sophisticated by World War II, well, it’s believed to have been the same in ancient times. The casualties in hand-to-hand combat back then were a lot lower than you’d expect.”

“Tons of people died during Japan’s Warring States period, though,” Yuichi offered, thinking back on scenes from the countless period dramas he’d watched. Movies weren’t shy about showing people killing each other during war.

“You probably think so because of the flashy portrayals in fiction. But most of the people who fought back then were farmers. You think they were going to start killing people just because they were dragged onto a battlefield? The key back then was mainly to get a lot of people together and shout out, ‘Hey, you can’t beat us! Surrender already!’ and make a big show of fighting so that they think you’re going to kill them so they say, ‘Oh, we lose!’ If you can secure victory quickly, no one has to kill each other needlessly.”

Mutsuko said this as if she’d seen it firsthand.

“People back then weren’t too different from people today, psychologically speaking. It’s not easy to kill just because someone tells you to. So if you’re in an isekai where there’s a war going on, don’t you think the same would apply? Let’s move on with that assumption in place!”

Yuichi had always assumed that people in the old days had had no problems killing other people. But maybe that idea was rooted in bias.

“Okay, now here’s the issue. If people can’t kill people, it makes it hard to wage a war, right? This is important to know if you want to use modern day knowledge to cheat! The question is: how do you create humans who can kill other humans? This is a fundamental of combat more important than tactics or strategy.”

Mutsuko sounded truly gleeful as she spoke.

“There’s a lot of examples about how to do this, but let’s use the American army as an example. They knew you couldn’t win a war if your soldiers wouldn’t fight, so they did a lot of research on this. This research got the firing rate of soldiers in the Vietnam War up to 90%.”

Ninety percent? That was a huge increase from the twenty percent figure she had mentioned before, Yuichi thought.

“They used psychological conditioning. It’s a little too complex to go into detail, so let’s use a relatively easy-to-understand example: practice shooting human-like targets. In the past, gun range targets had been just the unmoving round kind, but they turned the targets into realistic humanoid ones and had the soldiers practice firing at them as they jumped at them. They’d dress balloons in combat uniforms, or fill them with red paint so they would burst with ‘blood’ when shot. Eventually, that got the soldiers to instinctively shoot other humans, and after enough time passed, they began to see the enemy as nothing more than targets. They convinced themselves it was targets they were shooting, not other people.”

“Um... still, that all seems a little absurd...” Aiko was scowling. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant thing to hear about.

“That’s right. No matter how much training or justification you give them, you can’t completely remove a person’s resistance to killing! That’s why they conditioned the soldiers in the Vietnam War to kill people that way, but it meant a lot of them came home traumatized... Oh hey, what’s wrong with Takeuchi?”

Natsuki had collapsed on the table.

“Look... you know? Just try to be more considerate,” Yuichi said.

It was hard to tell where Natsuki stood on the question of killing, but it was clear to Yuichi that she wasn’t completely indifferent to it.

He left the room with Aiko.

Mutsuko and Kanako were staying behind to discuss the latter’s novel, and Natsuki had excused herself to go home after a little rest.

Yuichi and Aiko walked side by side between the gym and the athletics field.

It was late in the day, but the summer sunlight was still streaming down hard enough to burn. Even Yuichi found it a little harsh.

Worried, he looked over at Aiko. She was walking beside him without a care in the world. She seemed totally fine, despite her vampiric nature.

Through the fence, he could see the sports clubs practicing on the athletic field. He’d assumed they would be getting more serious in anticipation for summer vacation, but the silhouettes there seemed sporadic and listless. Yuichi was just thinking it was a bit strange when Aiko spoke up.

“Takeuchi said she wanted normal friends, so I wonder if she’s self-conscious about not being normal herself...”

“I dunno,” Yuichi said. It was hard to get into the mind of a serial killer, but the talk of killing today seemed to have upset her.

She had been pacified, but she was still a killer, and he still wasn’t sure what that meant. He had reluctantly allowed her into the club, but he still didn’t really know how to act around her.

“Hey, are you okay for sunburn?” Yuichi asked. The talk of Natsuki was getting awkward, so he’d decided to change the subject.

“Yeah,” Aiko said. “I don’t usually worry about it, but I still never get burned.”

“That’s convenient,” Yuichi commented.

“You don’t think a little tan would look more wholesome?” Aiko asked.

“I think you look better with fair skin, myself.”

“R-Really?” Aiko beamed.

“By the way, what’s going on with your brother? Is he still talking about crazy stuff?” Yuichi had agreed to let Aiko confide in him about her brother in exchange for Yuichi confiding in her about his Soul Reader, and he occasionally remembered and asked her about it. He assumed she would say it was more of the same, but instead, her expression clouded over.

After hanging her head for a moment, she raised it again. “Hey... do you want to come by my house?”

“How come?” Yuichi asked.

“I want to talk to you about my brother.”

“Sure,” Yuichi agreed readily.

“I’ll just call home and let them know,” Aiko said.

With that, they both headed for Aiko’s house.

Their neighbors referred to it as “the nature park,” since from the outside, it looked like a forest surrounded by a fence.

The grounds were huge and the mansion sat at the center, which made it hard to see from the outside, and this naturally led to the assumption that it was a park.

“Whew... it’s kind of incredible,” Yuichi said. Even after they were inside the fence, it still looked like a forest. The shrill chorus of the cicadas was deafening around them.

“Sorry...” Aiko said.

“What are you apologizing for?” Yuichi asked.

“Well, it’s a little embarrassing...” Aiko said, shrinking a bit.

They walked down the sun-dappled path. It felt so much like a stroll through the woods that he nearly forgot they were heading for Aiko’s house.

“It’s nice to have all this greenery, isn’t it?” he asked.

“There’s too much, though... I hear people think we’re a park...” Aiko murmured.

Yuichi looked around. He saw a pond, large rocks, and what looked like a cave. It really was too large to be a proper lawn. “Do you ever get lost?”

“It’s okay as long as you follow the paths. We also have security cameras set up all over, so if you do get lost, you can be found quickly.”

“I bet Mutsuko would love this,” Yuichi murmured. It seemed like a good place for survival training.

After walking for a while, they finally came upon a run-down Western-style estate. It was only three stories tall, but it made up for that with length.

“Sorry to repeat myself, but it really is incredible,” he said.

“Do you think it looks haunted too, Sakaki?” Aiko asked nervously, turning her eyes up at him.

“Huh?” he asked. “I think it’s cool. You don’t see many buildings like this in Japan.”

“Yeah. It was moved here from overseas, they say, a long time ago.” Aiko seemed happier now. Yuichi decided not to mention that it seemed like the kind of house that would play host to a murder mystery.

“But I guess it’s only natural that people think it’s a haunted house,” Aiko continued. “Everyone who lives in it is a vampire.”

As they approached the building, the door opened.

“Automatic doors?” Yuichi asked. It wouldn’t be surprising, with a mansion this size.

“No, no. See? There’s a camera over there. They see me coming home, and they open it for me.”

“So effectively an automatic door...” Yuichi said, dumbfounded. The thought processes of rich people were beyond him.

“Welcome home, my lady.” A servant in a maid’s outfit bowed to Aiko. Her uniform was classic and understated, but the beauty of the person wearing it made it seem fancier than it was. She seemed in her early twenties, with a placid air about her. Above her head was the label “Vampire IV.”

As Aiko had said before, the servants were all vampires.

“Thanks, Akiko,” Aiko said. “I mentioned on the phone that you didn’t have to go to any trouble or anything...”

“We are not going to any trouble, so I do not know what you—”

“Is this Yuichi Sakaki?!” An enormous voice boomed out from further in the house. Yuichi peeked past the maid.

An enormous man in a white coat stood in the spacious entryway hall, his legs planted at shoulder width and arms folded.

“Dad!” Aiko cried out in surprise.

Apparently, he was Aiko’s father. Kazuya Noro.

Aiko had told Yuichi that he was the director of Noro General Hospital, but why was the man suddenly glaring at him? He couldn’t understand it. He had never met the man before.

Above the man’s head was the label “Super Doctor.”

What, not “Vampire”?

If everyone in the house was a vampire, did that mean that this man was both a vampire and a super doctor?

“A pleasure to meet you. I’m Yuichi Sakaki.” Yuichi hurried to give him a proper greeting. As intimidating as he was, this man was still the master of the house. He didn’t want to give offense.

“Hmph. I am Aiko’s father.” Kazuya returned the greeting standoffishly as he continued to size Yuichi up with his glance.

“Hey, Dad? You’re being really rude!” Aiko exclaimed.

“Huh? Oh, um, well...” Kazuya apparently hadn’t expected his daughter to be angry, as he quickly changed his attitude. “Fine, then. Sakaki, is it? Come here a minute.”

“Hang on! What are you gonna do?” Aiko cried.

“Don’t ask, just come.” Kazuya headed for the corner of the entrance hall, and Yuichi and Aiko followed.

There was a round table with a vase of live flowers on it, but Kazuya swept the vase off the table.

“What are you doing, Dad?!”

“It’s in the way!” Kazuya rolled up his sleeve, revealing an arm like a tree trunk with visible veins. He placed his elbow on the table. “Sakaki, the rule is that no one may enter this house until they beat me in arm wrestling.”

“We’ve never had that rule before!” Aiko shouted.

The abrupt arm wrestling challenge so confused Yuichi that he didn’t know how to respond at first.

“My lady, the head of the house makes the rules,” Akiko said smoothly. “If that is what he says, that is what will happen. In this moment, it is decided.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Aiko’s father said. “Not to brag, but I am known as a super doctor. A broken bone, a compound fracture or two... it’s nothing I can’t treat.” He opened and closed his hand. The fingers were thick and exuded power.

“This is so stupid! Let’s go, Sakaki,” Aiko said furiously.

“Running away? Then don’t think you’ll ever cross this house’s threshold again!” Kazuya barked out suddenly.

“Oh, come on! Dad, what are you so mad about?” Aiko cried.

Yuichi was a bit flabbergasted, but he grasped what was going on. Which meant there was only one thing to do. Yuichi walked up to the table. gripped the edge with his left hand, and put his right elbow on top of it.

“Sakaki! You don’t have to play along with him!”

“It’s okay. It’s just arm wrestling. And if I win, he’ll let me in, right?” Yuichi answered.

“I’ll even go you one better,” Kazuya confirmed. “If I smash your arm or cause an open fracture, and you can still flirt with Aiko in that condition, you still pass!”

“We’re not flirting... Okay, Noro. You give the signal.” Yuichi gripped Kazuya’s hand.

“Huh? ...Fine, whatever! Start!” Aiko threw down her hand to start the match.

“Rarrrgh!” As Aiko gave the signal, Kazuya let out a bellowing cry. His arm swelled even larger, ropy muscles bulging to the surface. He was putting all his power into it, trying to break Yuichi’s arm. His face turned red, and he gritted his teeth so hard he could crush rocks between them.

“How desperate are you?!” Aiko cried out in shock.

Everyone must have assumed the match would be over in an instant, but seconds passed, and neither man’s arm moved from their starting positions. Yuichi was holding his own against Kazuya’s strength.

“What?!” Kazuya shouted.

“Sorry, but I intend to win,” Yuichi said calmly. He was very competitive. Once challenged, there was no way he would back down.

Yuichi brought all his strength to bear. Kazuya’s arm began to tremble and give way.

But Kazuya was equally determined. He dug down deeper and pushed back, letting their power be equally matched once more. “Who the hell are you? How do you have so much strength in those scrawny arms?”

“Dad! You can’t say that to a guest!” Aiko exclaimed.

“Graaaaaaaaaah!” Kazuya screamed.

Just like that, it was over, as the table broke in half with a crash.

Yuichi and Kazuya glared at each other, still locked in their grip.

“Shall we call it a draw?” Yuichi asked, keeping his eyes daringly locked on Kazuya’s.

“Time for round two, the boxing match! Now you’ll see my true—”

There was a light smacking sound. Aiko had punched Kazuya in the arm. It couldn’t have hurt him much, but it gave Kazuya pause.

“Dad, you jerk! I hate you!” There were tears in Aiko’s eyes.

“Ah, well, Aiko, I just wanted to test the man in your life. A boy needs to be strong, to protect his girl...”

Smack. She hit him again.

“Dad, you dummy!” With that as her last word, Aiko ran off crying.

The two men were left behind, still holding hands, while the maid in the old-fashioned uniform watched placidly.

“I guess of the two, ‘dummy’ would hurt more...” Yuichi murmured, hoping the triviality might break the silence.

“Yeah...” But all Kazuya could do was sigh in response.

“Can I go after her?” Yuichi asked.

Kazuya looked at him uncomfortably. Aiko’s rage seemed to have pacified him. “...Please.”

Kazuya released his hand, and Yuichi did the same.

Dejection was written clearly over Kazuya’s face. He clearly couldn’t stand seeing Aiko cry. “She probably went to her room. It’s at the end of the hall on the second floor. She never listens to me when she gets like this...”

“If you want to know if I can protect her, don’t worry. I will. And since there seems to be some misunderstanding here, you should probably know that Noro and I aren’t dating.”

“Really?” Kazuya’s eyes opened wide and he stepped toward Yuichi.

“I just came here to talk about her brother.” Cowed by Kazuya’s advance, Yuichi took a step back.

“I see... But listen to me! You’d better not do anything to break Aiko’s heart and disgrace her!”

“I would never even think of it,” Yuichi assured him.

“Never, you say? You bastard! Are you saying my Aiko is unattractive?” Kazuya exclaimed.

What a difficult person... Yuichi sighed and opted not to respond.

“Well, I’m off,” he said, then climbed the stairs and headed to the back room on the second floor.

He found Aiko’s room right away. It had her nameplate on the door.

“It’s me. Let me in,” Yuichi called out as he knocked.

After a while, the door opened. Aiko looked at him, her eyes red and moist. “Sakaki... I’m sorry. My father was so rude to you...”

“Don’t cry. It didn’t bother me.” Yuichi found that the sight of Aiko in tears unsettled him. It gave him an uneasy feeling in his chest.

“Sorry I ran off...” she mumbled.

“It’s okay. Anyway, your dad gave me permission to come in, so don’t sweat it.”

“Yeah... Anyway, don’t just stand out there. Come in.” Aiko seemed to be feeling a little better as Yuichi stepped inside.

Her room was the polar opposite of Mutsuko’s room: pristine and feminine, with white and pink coloring. There was a row of stuffed animals against the wall.

It feels like a girl’s room... Yuichi took a seat on the sofa.

“Oh, I’ll bring you something to drink.” Aiko said as she walked out.

Yuichi began to feel restless. I’ve heard that pink is a soothing color, but...

Maybe it was because it was his first time being in a girl’s room other than his big sister’s. Yuichi had assumed that living with his sisters all this time had gotten him used to girls, but maybe being around a girl who was his classmate was different.

Eventually, Aiko returned with a tray with some cold tea, and placed it on the table.

“Hey, don’t you have a maid?” Yuichi asked. “She seemed like the ‘at your service’ type...”

“Yeah, but she’s not there for us kids. We were raised to do things for ourselves. And don’t get any funny ideas; all the servants are old ladies. The young, pretty maid thing is just an illusion.”

“Huh? Even the girl at the front door?” The maid Akiko who met him at the door certainly seemed young...

“Akiko is over fifty years old. Oh, and everyone in the house, servants included, are vampires.”

Fifty years old, she had said, giving the word special emphasis. He had heard that vampires were unaging, and to look that young at fifty certainly suggested she wasn’t human.

“Whew... I don’t know if it’s the money thing or the vampire thing, but it definitely feels like we live in different worlds... Hey, I’ve been wondering. If you’re so rich, why don’t you go to a private school?” Yuichi asked her.

“That’s part of our upbringing, too,” Aiko said. “We’re supposed to go to public school.”

“That reminds me,” Yuichi said. “I thought it was weird that Konishi comes to our school, too. You think it’s the same for her?”

“Konishi? Good point... If she’s as rich as she says she is, you’d think she’d be attending a charm school or something.”

Yuri Konishi. In her introduction on the first day of school, she had gained the attention of the class by saying she was from a wealthy family and that she was above commoners like them. But Yuichi’s attention had been on the “Anthromorph” label above her head.

“Now that you mention it, I feel like I’ve met Konishi somewhere before,” Aiko said.

“What, you think you met her at some rich person’s shindig?” Yuichi asked.

“I think so. I have a memory of her in a dress at a ball, or something like that.”

A ball... They really did live in different worlds, Yuichi thought. “By the way, what’s this about your brother?”

“I haven’t seen him in a while,” Aiko admitted. “I think he ran away from home.”

“Huh?” Yuichi started, shocked by the revelation. “Ran away... you said you haven’t seen him in ‘a while,’ so you don’t know for sure how long? When did you talk to him last? Did he say anything then?”

“I think the last time I talked to him was the day I went out shopping with you,” Aiko said. “He rushed up to me as I came to the door, but all he did was ask about you. It was the first time he’d talked to me in a while, too...” Aiko added, with a note of regret.

“Huh? Really?” Their shopping trip had been a week ago. That he hadn’t talked to her since then, and had gone missing at some point, suggested a degree of estrangement.

“He’d been acting really weird lately,” Aiko went on. “There was this time we were all eating together and he got mad and stormed off, and the last time I met him, he was really belligerent, too... When he said weird things before, I assumed it was his middle school syndrome and I didn’t take it that seriously. But lately I feel like it’s become something else... I haven’t tried to talk to him much lately because he’s frightened me so much.”

“I see... Well, I think I get the drift,” Yuichi said. “So, what do you want to do now that you know he’s gone?”

“I thought we might check his room,” Aiko said. “We might learn something there.”

“It’s worth a try. Where is it?”

“Across from mine,” Aiko said.

Yuichi stood up, left the room, and headed for the one opposite it. Aiko followed him.

The door wasn’t locked, and the knob turned without resistance. Yuichi trepidatiously opened the door and stepped inside.

“...Hey, Noro, do you guys usually leave coffins lying around?”

“Huh?” Aiko’s jaw dropped.

Kyoya’s room, like Aiko’s, was about twelve by twelve feet. There was a coffin sitting right in front of the door. Yuichi lifted the lid. There was dirt inside.

“I’ve never seen this thing here,” Aiko murmured. “I wonder... if he brought it from the crypt...”

“The crypt?” Yuichi asked skeptically. It wasn’t a word you usually heard in everyday conversation.

“Yeah, it’s out on the lawn. It’s the resting place for members of our clan.”

“Resting place? You don’t mean that literally, do you?”

“Huh? Oh, no, no... I mean, it’s where we put them after they die.”

Yuichi didn’t think it was unreasonable to assume that vampires could sleep in coffins, but apparently they didn’t go that far. Why, then, was there a coffin in Aiko’s brother’s room?

“Does your brother sleep here?” he asked.

“N-No way. He doesn’t go that far... I don’t think...” Aiko trailed off, clearly lacking confidence in the assertion.

Yuichi approached the coffin and had a look inside. There was only a thin layer of dirt at the bottom, so it would be possible to lie inside and close the lid. There was some color mixed in with the dirt, too, a stain from some dark red liquid. Blood, most likely.

“What... is this?” Aiko asked fearfully. She must have noticed the blood, too.

“He was injured, maybe... Could sleeping in a coffin speed up your recovery time?” Yuichi asked.

“That would be the first I’ve heard of it... I mean, we heal almost instantly from even major injuries, so why would he even need to?”

Yuichi decided it might be best to talk to Mutsuko as soon as possible.

He looked around the room for further clues.

The coffin had caught his attention right off the bat, but the rest of the room was just as odd. It was like a tornado had come through. The bed was split in two, the bookshelf was smashed, and the books lay scattered about.

“Hey. It’s not like this all the time, right?” he asked.

“Of course not! I glanced in once before when the door was open, and it wasn’t like this at all...” She must have been talking about the time she saw her brother practice swishing his cape in the mirror.

From the patterns in the dust, Yuichi decided, this must have happened very recently. Yuichi began scanning through the scattered books and magazines for clues.

“Hey, does your brother like girls with big breasts?”

“Huh?! Where did that come from?” Aiko exclaimed.

“Well, I don’t see any roleplay or costume fetish stuff... Just titty magazines.” Yuichi showed the materials in question to Aiko, whose face turned bright scarlet.

“Wh-Why are you looking at those?! This is sexual harassment!”

“Well, I just thought it might give us a clue to where he went. Like, maybe he’s gone somewhere with lots of busty girls around...”

“Idiot!” Aiko fumed. “That’s aimed both at him and you!”