VOLUME 3

Chapter 1: Part 5

We were supposed to meet in front of the station. It was still about fifteen minutes before our meeting time, but Tomonori was already waiting for me. When she saw me, she waved and rushed over to meet me.

“Aikawa, you’re so slooow~~.”

“But, I mean, I’m here early…”

I wonder how many times I’d actually seen Tomonori in her street clothes.

I was expecting her to dress pretty sloppily in a t-s.h.i.+rt and jeans, but she wore a pair of shorts that covered her slender, healthy legs, along with a vest and a white t-s.h.i.+rt that made her b.r.e.a.s.t.s look twice as big as they did when she was in her school uniform. For her shoes, she had gone with boots rather than sneakers.

“Here’s your ticket. Come on, let’s get going.”

Tomonori took my hand and pretty much leapt all the way to the train station’s ticket window.

It seemed we had to be there by 5 pm, so she was in a hurry.

Tomonori was smiling the entire time we were on the train, and I could even hear her humming. When she acted like this, she really seemed just like a boy.

Just standing here and getting shook around by the train was fine and all, but we were finally alone, so I thought that maybe I should try to get some vampire ninja information out of her, but I couldn’t think of anything to ask. Something I could only ask Tomonori… Something I had to ask Tomonori… What was there?

Hm? When I thought about it…

“You know, I’ve always wondered, but… Why did you choose the name Yos.h.i.+da Yuki?”

“Hmm…” After she thought about it for a bit, she seemed to hit on the answer. “Ah, right!” she exclaimed. It seemed that she had forgotten about it.

“I mean, if you start a name with ‘Yos.h.i.+,’ it feels like a girl’s name, doesn’t it? I wanted a name that sounded like a girl’s.”

“But ‘Mael’ also sounds a lot like a girl’s.”

Tomonori stiffened when I said that.

“When I got that name, I thought it was a pretty good name too, and I was very happy.”

“When you got that name… Normally, you get a name before you’re born or right after.”

“I’m a vampire ninja, and if we haven’t completed training yet then we don’t get a name. Once we’re done and the others are convinced that we can definitely fight demons, we’re given Eucliwood h.e.l.lscythe’s blood and we become vampire ninjas. That’s when we get our names.”

“It’s like what happens to Kabuki actors.” (1)

“Well, yeah, I guess.”

We smiled at each other.

“And then, last year, I discovered something when I saw our acting chief playing a Playstation game.”

“Oh? What was it?”

“I saw something really strange. The enemy monster used an attack called ‘Maelstrom.’”

“So it was an attack in the game?”

“And you know, I was reaaaally shocked. Then I started to want another name. And if I ever went to high school, I would definitely need a fake name.”

“You… Don’t tell me that that’s the only reason you started going to school…”

“But… It was a squid. A squid who used Maelstrom.”

“That’s… I’m sorry.”

Seeing a squid do that must have been shocking. I wonder what game it was… If it was a Saga Series (2) game, then I wanted to play it and see that monster too. Okay, something else I wanted to ask her… Oh yeah.

“Hey, Tomonori… Did you hear about what happened to Sera?”

Sera and Tomonori were in opposing factions, but they were both vampire ninjas. Tomonori probably knew that Sera had defied orders. I wondered if Tomonori also held that against Sera. Did it mean she wanted to kill her?

“Seraphim… Yeah, I heard about that.”

“So you won’t forgive her for that?”

“I understand why Seraphim did what she did… But, to be honest, as a vampire ninja, I can’t forgive her.”

So even Tomonori thought like that. Could it be that she also wanted to kill Seraphim?

“But that was still pretty amazing.”

“Amazing?”

“Yeah. That wasn’t something you could do without being really determined. I mean, worst case scenario, you get labeled a fugitive ninja and you’re hunted until you die… So I think that someone like Seraphim, who would pick that path, and someone like Eucliwood h.e.l.lscythe, who could actually give Seraphim the determination to do that, are both really amazing. So… I don’t want to kill them or anything.”

I see… That’s true. So Tomonori was that kind of person. Rather than blindly following laws or accepting the official view, she could look at things objectively. That’s why, when it came to Tomonori, I really felt…

…What was this? Dammit. Again? Once again, I felt an itching in my chest. Why? All I could see running around my head was Yuu with a lonely expression on her face.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

(1) A form of traditional j.a.panese drama that I won’t get too much into detail on.

(2) Game series by Square, which does have Maelstrom as an attack.