Epilogue 1: Let’s Finally Pick Where to Go For Our Summer Training Camp

Six days had passed.

After losing consciousness, Yuichi had been taken to Noro General Hospital and had spent most of the time after that asleep. Naturally, he was really badly off this time. He wouldn’t be able to move for a while, so he had been on an IV drip. By now, though, he was nearly recovered, and he was passing the time on the bed in the small room with little to do.

He was so bored, he thought, he might even welcome Ibaraki’s company.

Today, the school would be holding the closing ceremony for their first term.

The fact that they were still holding it suggested that no one had noticed what had happened at the school. Out of sheer boredom, Yuichi had spent most of his time reading the news on his phone. There was no mention of the recent incident, though there were some rumors about giant bats and wolf-people that seemed like they might be vaguely related. It was just the kind of thing people spread around the internet for fun, though, with no actual proof.

“Hello!” A cheerful voice greeted Yuichi from the door to his room.

It was Tomomi Hamasaki, “Fake.” She was wearing her glasses, with her hair down to her shoulders rather than in buns. She was in her school uniform, too — in other words, it was the Tomomi he saw in class every day. It suggested that she was dropping by on the way back from school.

Yuichi was surprised to see her. He didn’t think they were close enough for her to want to visit him in the hospital.

“Wow, that’s a real ‘what the heck are you doing here?!’ expression,” Tomomi commented.

“That’s not what I was thinking,” Yuichi said. “I just found it unusual. Is school over?”

“Yeah. I came here straight from the closing ceremony.” Tomomi sat down in a chair next to the bed. “I’m here to see you less as a classmate and more as a regular. You know, keep you quiet, and stuff.”

“I won’t tell anyone, and I won’t ask any more about your situation, so don’t worry,” Yuichi said earnestly. He genuinely didn’t want to know, anyway, and prying into her story might get him mixed up in another complicated mess.

Tomomi’s mouth popped open in shock. “Oh, come on! Don’t you want to know who Nihao the China is, or why we weren’t disturbed by those anthromorphs in the store?”

“I thought you came here to keep me quiet!” Yuichi sighed. Apparently she had really been hoping to tell him. “Hearing about things I don’t need to know tends to end up making trouble for me. So I really don’t want to know.”

“Huh? Really? You know enough by now that I could probably tell you everything... I mean, I assumed that’s what you’d say, so I thought up a whole spiel on the way here!”

“Not my problem,” Yuichi said.

“What? I didn’t know you were such a jerk, Sakaki! Okay, now I’m gonna tell you whether you like it or not! I’ll whisper my true identity into your ear!” Fuming, Tomomi leaned over the bed, pressing close to Yuichi.

“You stubborn idiot! I told you, I don’t want to know!” Yuichi pushed back against her.

“Hey! What are you doing?!” An enraged cry sounded out behind them. Yuichi and Tomomi turned to face it.

It was Aiko, holding a bouquet of flowers. She was also in her school uniform, apparently having come right from school as well.

“Oh, well, ahaha...” Tomomi sat down on the bed, laughing awkwardly. “O-Okay, I’m going now! We’ll be waiting for you at the restaurant!”

With that, she scurried past Aiko and left.

“Sakaki... well, I know you wouldn’t get involved in any funny business, but...” Aiko sighed.

“Hamasaki said she came to keep me quiet, but then tried to tell me all her secrets by force,” Yuichi said.

Aiko frowned. “Yeah, I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I! Did you know she was like that?”

“She’s a lot of fun to be around,” Aiko said. “She’s just a little thoughtless and hyperactive sometimes. I doubt she’ll do that to you once you’re out of the hospital.”

“I’ll be feeling better soon,” Yuichi assured her. “Don’t worry.”

Aiko walked up to Yuichi and sat down. The hospital room was very small, which meant Aiko was close enough for him to feel a little self-conscious.

“Um... I’m really sorry about all the trouble my brother caused...” Aiko bowed her head, expression humble.

“Don’t worry. I’m not bothered. How’s he doing, anyway?” Yuichi had heard Kyoya wasn’t dead, and that his vampiric regeneration was hard at work, so that was a load off of his mind.

“They locked him in the dungeon,” Aiko said.

“The dungeon? You guys have one of those at home?”

“I didn’t know either, but apparently, yeah. He’s doing some time there. The madness seems to have ended, though, so I think he might be fine now.”

Kyoya had lost nearly all of his powers. Thanks to that, the people he had enslaved were back to normal.

“Dad was really surprised by how fast you healed.” Aiko changed the subject, apparently not wanting to talk about her brother.

Yuichi wasn’t inclined to ask any more about him, either. “Well, I did sleep for six days straight.” He wasn’t completely recovered yet, but it was enough that he could resume his daily life, at least.

“Yoriko threw a fit, too,” Aiko added.

“Yori came?” Yuichi had been asleep and thus, hadn’t been aware of it.

“Every single day,” Aiko told him. “She kept mumbling about killing whoever did this. It was a little scary.”

“Yori’s pretty indiscriminate, yeah...” Maybe he should tell her to chill out about it.

“Your mother only came by once, I think,” Aiko added.

“That sounds about right for her.”

Yuichi’s mother didn’t seem to worry about him very much. Perhaps it was because he had been in the hospital so many times, she knew how tough he was by now.

“So summer break arrived while I was in the hospital, huh?” Yuichi asked. He’d been asleep, and the next thing he knew, it was summer vacation. It felt a bit like he had missed out on something.

“I’m glad you didn’t miss out on summer vacation,” Aiko said. “I hear you’re being released tomorrow.”

“Speaking of which, are Orihara and the others okay?” Yuichi asked.

“Yeah, apparently the charm disappeared right away,” Aiko said.

Fortunately (in a sense), the girls who had been charmed and imprisoned in the school didn’t remember what had happened.

There was a moment’s silence, and Aiko suddenly averted her eyes, as if suddenly remembering something. “Um... I got... pretty weird back there, huh? I told you that even though I’m a vampire, I’m not so different from a human... but I guess I’m not normal at all...” she said hesitantly. “It was like my mind went blank, but a part of me was so calm... the use of the power came to me so naturally... and it was telling me to kill my brother...” she continued, on the verge of tears.

“It was beautiful,” Yuichi said. Yuichi wondered how he should comfort her. After deciding that his first priority was to keep from hurting her, those were the words that he chose.

“Huh?” Aiko lifted her head and looked at him in utter confusion as color filled her cheeks.

“I-I mean, your wings,” Yuichi said. “The way they glittered. It was beautiful and incredible. Yeah.”

“Really? I d-don’t really remember much about it...”

“It surprised me a little,” Yuichi said, hoping to assuage her concerns. “But it’s not that big a deal, I don’t think.”

“R-Really?” Aiko sounded genuinely relieved.

As the conversation fell silent, Yuichi thought back on what had happened. From what he could see, Aiko’s potential far outstripped Kyoya’s. The strongest person in that room on that day had been Aiko.

The world’s strongest little sister, huh?

Yuichi felt like maybe he knew where Kyoya’s resentment had come from. Perhaps he had caught a glimpse of her power once before.

Now that Aiko was feeling better, her manner turned teasing. “Hey, you were really mad then, weren’t you? Because you thought he might kill me.”

“Well...” Yuichi really had been. He’d been so enraged, he hadn’t been able to stop himself. If Aiko hadn’t stepped in, he probably would have killed Kyoya. “It just bothered me to see a brother try to hurt his little sister.” He averted his eyes from hers.

“What the heck?” Aiko puffed out her cheek in dissatisfaction.

“Well, it’s okay,” she continued after a moment. “You kind of have an obsession with little sisters.”

“Huh? What makes you say that?” Yuichi looked back at Aiko, her wording unexpected and slightly startling.

Aiko smiled. “Thanks for stopping my brother.”

Yuichi averted his eyes again, shyly. “Oh, b-by the way. You sucked my blood, Noro. Will I be okay?” He was quick to change the subject.

“Huh? You don’t think...” Aiko asked in concern.

“No, I’m not having any symptoms, as far as I know,” Yuichi said. “I was just wondering if I might become a vampire too, or something like that.”

“I don’t know... b-but if it happens, I’ll take responsibility!”

“I don’t think that’s something you take responsibility for, Noro. ...I know. Why don’t we test to see if I’m enslaved?”

“What do you mean?” Aiko tilted her head.

“You know. If I’m your thrall, I have to do what you tell me, right? So order me to do something totally unreasonable. If I can refuse you, I’m fine. Probably.”

After a moment’s thought, Aiko made up her mind, and began to give an order. “O-Okay. Something unreasonable... th-then why don’t you give me a ki—”

“Is this flirting? Are you flirting?!” Before Aiko could finish, Mutsuko barged into the hospital room. “Hey, why do they even call it flirting, anyhow?”

“W-We weren’t flirting!” Aiko responded in irritation.

Kanako, Natsuki, and Yoriko filed in behind Mutsuko.

“Hey, that’s too many people. You can visit one at a time!” Aiko protested.

The small room suddenly felt much, much smaller.

“Huh? But today’s the day we’re supposed to choose our training camp location! You couldn’t come, so we came to you!” Mutsuko declared.

“You want to run the club from here?” Yuichi asked tiredly. Having Yoriko there, on top of the usual members, tilted the gender balance even further to the female side.

“Then let’s decide where to go for summer training camp! Vacation starts tomorrow, so we need to start preparations today!” Mutsuko cried.

“I’m still in recovery. Can’t you tell?” Yuichi complained.

“I see. Then we’ll let you choose! Then there’s no issue, right? Just pick the option that best jives with how you feel! Oh, and no ‘just stay at school,’ got that?”

Yuichi thought back on the candidates they had named previously before. A summer house by the sea, a junkyard, the isekai elevator, a foreign country, the “Unmarked Land,” and the Mayoiga. “Okay. By process of elimination, it’s gotta be the summer house!” There was nothing else to choose.

“Junkyard...” “Isekai...” Natsuki and Kanako murmured dejectedly.

“I’m not going to either of those!” Yuichi yelled at the despondent pair.

“Big Brother, I’ll be going, too,” Yoriko said.

“Huh? Why are you going, Yori?” Yuichi turned to his little sister. She sounded like she meant it.

“Because it’s not a school thing, right? So I can come!” In the end, Mutsuko had never bothered to ask the school for permission, so it was going to be more a group outing than a sanctioned club activity.

“Then Noro’s family’s summer house it is!” Mutsuko proclaimed.

And thus, Yuichi’s summer vacation began.