002

"Have I noticed anything strange about Yukinon? No, I can't say I have, Hikki."

We were outside on the courtyard during lunch break. I had asked Yuigahama to meet up here earlier on in the day, during the breaks between classes when we waited for the next appointed teacher to come. When she asked if it was an important discussion or a serious matter, I sensed a hint of desperate anticipation, and afterwards, a transparent disappointment when I replied, with all the casual indifference I could muster into one sentence, that it was nothing of importance.

"Are you sure? It doesn't necessarily have to be about her attitude, even just the way she looks. Have you noticed anything peculiar or even the slightest bit different?"

"She's been using a different perfume scent recently, I noticed. Before she used a really expensive brand, you know, the kind you see super models endorsing on T.V. but now she's using this department store brand that I use—I mean, no, I don't use department store brand perfume. Or I do, but occasionally, you know, not all the time."

"You've got quite the sense of smell," I ended up saying, after much deliberation.

I mean, what else could I say? The truth was either that she had an impressive nose, or something more sinister was happening here, crossing over to stalker territory, I'd say.

"Oh, gee, thank you," she said, taking my cautious remark as a compliment.

I sipped on my Coffee MAX, glancing all the while at Yuigahama, who fidgeted under my gaze.

If Yuigahama, who knew about it whenever her beloved 'Yukinon~' changed her perfume, had not picked out on the drastic changes happening to Yukinoshita, then no one else, in theory, should notice them too.

So we were safe, in the meantime.

"Although, what I do find it strange that she's absent today, which is really rare because she's really keen about her attendance record. She even came to school that one time even though she had a high fever and had to be forcibly taken home by Hiratusuka-sensei. I'm actually kind of worried now because whatever's keeping her at home must be pretty serious."

"It's only one day. What's so strange about taking one day from school off?"

"But like, I said, Hikki, this is Yukinon we're talking about! Missing one day of school is like having Tobe-kun show up every day to class."

"I don't think Yukinoshita would appreciate you comparing her to Tobe."

"Eh? What's wrong with Tobe?"

Wasn't she the one just speaking ill of Tobe?

"Nothing's wrong with Tobe."

Actually, no. There was plenty wrong with Tobe.

"I'm just saying, Hikki, that this case with Yukinon is like the opposite of 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'!"

"I'm not sure I follow," I said, honestly.

"I mean, it's like if an honest person were to lie about a wolf coming to the village, the villagers would actually believe it."

"The villagers actually believed that boy in the beginning, several times, actually. I think you're making some misinformed parallels here."

"But if Tobe were to cry wolf, I doubt anyone would believe him."

Did Tobe make you mad recently, Yuigahama-san? Did he make that comment about the correlation between big breasts and stupidity, again?

"You really don't have to worry about that girl, Yuigahama. Actually, she informed me last night that she had some business with her family, and that's why she couldn't come to school today."

"Wow, she must really trust you if she told you about it first, Hikki."

"She told me to pass it on to you the first chance I got. Nothing more than that. She was probably too shy to tell you about it, but of course she wouldn't mind telling me because, to her, my existence is equal to that of a mosquito's. So there, message delivered."

"And are you sure that's all? That's she's too shy? That you're just delivering a message?"

Her eyebrows rose inquisitively, all the while she was leaning towards me with a coy smile.

"Yeah, that's all."

Yuigahama smiled and shook her head twice, and an almost smug expression of knowing was on her face. "No, no. You were getting worried about her too, weren't you? That's why you were asking all those questions earlier. The truth is that you two are finally getting closer, right?"

"I wouldn't go as far as saying that," I said, exercising caution above everything else, because although Yuigahama was not what you'd call attentive, she did pick up on the subtext once in a while, that's just the sort of person she was.

"Yeah, maybe I'm just being too optimistic."

The defeated way in which she said that raised warning bells in my head.

"What do you mean?"

"Lately it feels like you two are trying too hard to look like you're close to each other, but it feels like there's this gap between you two. It's a weird thing to say, I know, but that's what it seems like to me. Maybe I'm just being a big dummy."

"You're just over-thinking things. You can't fake friendship."

She gave me a big, bright smile that I did not deserve.

"Yes, you're right, Hikki. I'm sorry for being weird all of a sudden."

"I'm used to it."

She hit me playfully on the shoulder.

"Hikki, you're so mean."

In her fit of mock-anger, she reflexively squeezed the half-full carton of strawberry milk she had been drinking, making a stream of pink, opaque liquid gush out of the straw—that just happened to be pointing in my direction.

"Ah! Sorry, Hikki, I got your shirt all wet!"

What's up with this plot development that belongs in ero-stories?!

I grabbed the handkerchief I kept in my left pocket and dabbed it at the inflicted area.

"It's no big deal. I can just change."

Yuigahama was smiling, but she was not a good actor at all, and she was definitely not a liar. Otherwise, her smile would have been more believable.

"Oh, really? I highly doubt that."

Because nothing ever changes, she said.

She mumbled it under her breath, in a whisper that was beyond indiscernible. I was not supposed to hear it. And normally I wouldn't. Normally I couldn't.

But I did.

"..."

"What's the matter, Hikki? If you don't hurry up and change, you'll be late for Hiratsuka-sensei's class."

"Sorry. Can you tell her that I'll be absent for the rest of the day?"

"Hikki…getting your shirt wet is not really that big of a deal. Just get one of the boys to lend you a shirt. Oh…now I see the problem…"

I ignored the obvious insult. Whether it was intentional or not, I didn't know. "No, I can just borrow Totsuka's or Zaimokuza's, or even Tobe's if I was desperate enough. It's just that I've been sick this whole day, you see, and I think I've reached my limit."

She placed the back of her hand against my forehead. At my chest, there was a soft sensation. I dared not look down.

"You don't feel like you have a fever. Are you sure you're sick? Let me guess, you forgot to do yesterday's homework, is that it? Don't worry! I'm sure Hiratsuka-sensei will be lenient with your punishment since she's been in a good mood these days."

This was true. After being promoted to teach the third year literature and getting a small, but still substantial, pay raise, Hiratsuka-sensei was in high spirits. So high in spirits that she barely complained about being single anymore, bragging about the benefits of the bachelorette life, or something like that. It was pitiful, really, but at least she was happy. And a happy Hiratsuka-sensei was a forgiving sensei.

However, that bit of knowledge wasn't useful to my situation now.

"No, I did the homework. I'll even give it to you so you can hand it off to sensei. I'm just really sick now. I'll go sign-out and head home."

"Geez, first it's Yukinon and then you. And now that I think about it, didn't Hayama take the day off as well? Maybe there's some flu going around."

I resisted urge the urge to make a joke about Yuigahama not catching it because she was an idiot.

"Maybe." I made a show of clutching at my stomach. "It really hurts."

"If it hurts so much then go. Don't force yourself. Just one thing, though, Hikki."

"What?"

She flashed an embarrassed smile.

"Can I copy your homework?"

Then what was she acting all high and mighty for earlier?!

I ended up letting her copy it, anyways.

"Thanks a lot, Hikki. I hope you get better!" she said, as she ran back to class, almost tripping along the way.

It's not liked she needed to ask permission in the first place. She could have copied it without telling me anything and I would be none the wiser. It was an unnecessary display of virtue, but it was virtue nonetheless, a quality that I seemed to be losing sight of more and more these days. Or maybe I never possessed such a noble quality in the first place. As if anything noble could ever be associated with an existence like mine. Maybe Yuigahama Yui, and certainly Yukinoshita Yukino. But not Hikigaya Hachiman.

Liar.

Coward.

Selfish.

Yes, these words are suitable to describe a character like me.

Anything but the word noble.

But let's put this bout of self-depreciation aside for now. I'd like to take this chance to talk about Hayama Hayato, seeing as I can't possibly avoid this subject any more than I already have.

To put it bluntly, I owe Hayama my life.

Okay, that's too dramatic. At the very least, I owe the guy a very big favour.

All of this relates to the summer before our third year in Sobu High, during vacation, that transitionary period of stasis, a time when I had shut myself out inside my own home and refused to see anyone from Sobu, much less the service club, all because of my fear of change. It was a dark time for me, a time that was equal in terms of mental stress and anxiety to my middle school years.

All because I feared the approaching third year, a fear that bordered that of neurosis.

And it was in that time of instability when I encountered it.

Surely, you must be familiar with the term 'vampire'.

Yes, in this age where superstitions and the supernatural had become a system of belief reserved for remnants of the Showa period, the uneducated, people living in rural areas, and in general, close minded fools, I had encountered the most fabled supernatural entity of all, that is, a vampire.

Despite all that talk earlier about being in a state of near-neurosis and instability and all that, let me assure you that I was still quite sane during those summer days. I had done nothing that would affect my mental health in any significant way. For example, I had not joined a new-age cult, nor have I read any of Dazai Osamu's works while tracing the character for ningen on my forehead, nor have I tried the so-called 'Gestalt Collapse' experiment in front of a mirror.

Yes, aside from completely isolating myself from classmates and then coming to school two months later, acting as if I had not just ignored them for the duration of summer, I had done nothing during that summer vacation that would have an expert of the mind label me as clinically insane.

I was the example of sane.

If sanity was a baseball team I'd be the ace pitcher.

I'd be hitting home-runs at bat, too.

A pitching hitter.

Like Furuya-kun.

Yeah, right.

Perhaps that encounter with the vampire—actually I'd describe it more as an assault rather than an encounter—was really the moment when my mind had shattered, and the subsequent events are machinations of my broken mind, delusions. Right now, as I tell this to you, I am locked in in some asylum, restrained in a strait jacket, rolling about in a padded room.

But no, it was real.

Not a hyper-realistic delusion

In a way I can't express, I felt to my very core that those events were real.

And the fact that Hayama Hayato had saved me, was also very real.

But anyways.

Lets move on.

It was a fifteen minute bus ride to the abandoned movie theatre, the place Hayama and I used as our base of operations.

'Operations' meaning, any work involving that of the supernatural.

It was relatively well kept over the years, although not to the point of being pristine. It closed down twenty years ago and for the first five years or so, the deceased owner's staff and some loyal patrons had taken turns in preserving the place, coming in to tidy it up and erase any graffiti that some delinquents had spray painted on the walls—and chasing those same delinquents out of the premises. However, as those people grew up and had families and responsibilities of their own, the theatre had become truly abandoned, visited only on occasion by curious teenagers and couples looking for a place to copulate.

It's kind of sad, actually.

At first Hayama and I used this place out of necessity to conduct our business, but Hayama—and on a lesser degree, myself—began to grow an attachment. The anachronistic paraphernalia, the gumball dispensers that ate your coins, the antique arcade machines, it was all so charming.

Like the charm of a clumsy, moe type character who goes all 'uguu~'. The feeling of 'I have to protect her', or something like that? Or actually, having those sorts of feelings for an inanimate building is actually disturbing, now that I think about it.

"..."

Please ignore these musings of mine.

There were still some rolls of film in the storage, rare classics that no doubt would fetch a pretty penny in a pawn shop. French, new-wave films seem to be a favourite. There's also stuff like Citizen Kane. Casablanca. Japanese classics like The Seven Samurai. And stashed away in the owner's office, under an inflatable bed, was a VHS copy of Emmanuele, a French erotica hidden inside a VHS case for another movie, the classic Tokyo Story. Imagine my shock when I had the sudden desire to watch Tokyo Story and instead found myself watching what equates to French pornography.

There was a wide parking lot you had to cross before you reached the theatre, and it felt so eerie in there, because it was so empty.

So unnatural empty. Like walking through a graveyard, or something to that effect.

I walked through with my hands in my pockets, hyper alert to my surroundings. My nerves were all shot up which was not good since I was already stressed enough as it is.

All the while I was thinking about how I could really use some coffee MAX. I really needed some caffeine in the system.

It took me five minutes just to reach the entrance and it took ten more minutes to scurry through the theatre until I arrived at my destination, our meeting area of choice.

This particular show room was the only clean one we found when we first excavated the abandoned theatre. There were no broken fixtures, layers of dust on the carpeted floor, or odd stains and tobacco butts scattered around. It was pristine, as if it had not known human contact yet.

From the time the theatre became abandoned, to the time it became found, it had been in stasis.

Or that's what I liked to imagine.

I was careful while opening the show room doors, treating them as if they were the doors to a cathedral.

The first thing I saw was Hayama Hayato.

He was there.

Standing in front of the projector screen.

With the light of the projector washing over him.

"You should try this some time, Hikigaya-kun. It feels as if I'm on top of a stage. Like I'm an actor."

He laughed.

Well, I'm already an actor, he said.

To be saved by someone like this, I didn't know how to feel about that.

It had been sometime that summer when Hayama stopped calling me Hikitani or some other variation of that humiliating pet name. I supposed that it was only natural. To save someone, after all, carries with it repercussions. Saving someone means that you are responsible for that person for as long as you are alive. Because who are you to judge when a person needs to be saved or not? Therefore, for interfering with the business of gods, you must take responsibility.

I know for a fact that this is what Hayama feels.

And I can see the logic in it.

If the world determined that from that day on I was meant to die as a human and be reborn as an entity beyond the boundaries of human. If I was meant to be a vampire. Then that would be my destiny.

For Hayama to deny that destiny.

What then should happen to my fate?

Therefore the burden falls upon Hayama.

When I drew closer, I saw that Hayama had his back to me the whole time. He had known that I was there even though I was careful when walking in.

Not for the first time, I wanted to see what he saw. Beyond the things I could see.

Even though I knew that he thought otherwise. That he wanted to see what I could see.

Preposterous.

Besides, who would want to see through these dead fish eyes of mine?

"Where's Yukinoshita?" I asked.

I took a seat on the front row. Hayama's back was still turned away from me. His shadow extended throughout the confines of the projector screen, a thirty-foot colossus. His shadow hands could grasp me in its palm and crush me without much resistance.

"She's in the bathroom right now. The water's running for once. Clean water, too. This is a lucky day. Just like the horoscope said."

"I didn't take you for a superstitious person."

"I wasn't, originally. But after everything we witnessed, I'm starting to."

"Well, I guess an exorcist who doesn't believe in the supernatural is either incompetent, or a fraud."

"I'm still an apprentice. Which means I'm still somewhat sane, and I plan to avoid anything that can change that. For example, I haven't traced the character for sekai on my forehead while reading Dasai Osamu's works."

"It's ningen not sekai."

"I don't fear the individual person as much as I fear the world. Introspection can drive one insane, but the world can completely break you apart."

"It has nothing to do with what you fear. That's just the rules of how the superstition works."

"There's no such thing as limits or rules when the supernatural is involved."

We waved his enormous shadow hands with an exaggerated flair.

"To be supernatural is to go beyond what is natural. That's the first thing you learn as an exorcist."

"How do you become a fully pledged exorcist, by the way? Do you have to go to some secret exorcist cram school, or something?"

"No. I will be formally invited to take a special test once I uncover the secrets of nen."

"Oi, I thought you were an exorcist, not a hunter?"

"Quite frankly, I am starting to have second doubts about taking this career path. It is rather tiring to receive such pitied looks from Hiratusuka-sensei whenever we have career prospect consultations."

"You actually told the Hiratsuka-sensei that you're aspiring to become an exorcist?!"

"No, I told her that I'm aspiring to become a fubuki dancer. That's my alibi."

"Can't you come up with a better alibi than that?!"

"My second option was to become a mangaka."

"That's even more hopeless than the first!"

"Oh, then I guess you wouldn't want to know what I listed as my third option."

"Please spare me. I know that this is all a joke of some kind, but it's not a funny one."

"Ramen shop owner."

"Gah!"

As if he achieved what he was vying for, Hayama laughed, his giant shadow-self contorting with the movement.

He finally turned around, his eyes unblinking despite the piercing beams of light directed his way. His lips were curled up in a compressed, almost mischievous, smile.

I shivered. There were times when Hayama spooked me.

Like I was facing an existence I could't comprehend.

Strange words coming from a half-vampire. But it was true.

"Ah, Yukinoshita-san. Good timing. Hikigaya-kun has arrived."

Those words, for some reason, made my heart beat. As if I had been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. It was that kind of intense revelation.

In the doorway, peeking through, with half of her body within the boundaries of the room and the other half outside, was her.

A person I had saved from the world.

A destiny I had extinguished.

A burden I will now carry forever.

Yukinoshita Yukino.

Or at least at least, the human half.

Omake

Komachi: Komachi, here!

Iroha: Iroha, here!

Both together: And thank you for reading the second Omake!

Iroha: Wait, wouldn't it be more appropriate to thank the readers for reading the second chapter, not just the Omake?

Komachi: Eh? But isn't it obvious that the readers are more interested in us cutie patootie's rather than my sulky onni-chan's exploits?

Iroha: Well, to be fair, senpai is rather sulky these days, huh?

Komachi: And is it just me or does Hayama-senpai seem like he has a couple of screws loose?

Iroha: Do you think the author will address this character inconsistency in a future instalment?

Komachi: Okay, it's time for our nightly quiz!

Iroha: Changing the subject?!

Komachi: What is the opposite of the boy who cries wolf?

Iroha: What?

Komachi: The wolf who cries boy!

Iroha: You just flipped the order around?!

Both together: Next time! Yukinoshita Cat (Domestic) Part 003!