Strike the Blood - Volume 12 - Chapter 1.1

Intermission i 

Somehow, the scent took him back—the scent of tatami with a hint of grass. 

It was a wide, Japanese-style room with a futon spread over the mat. This was where Kojou Akatsuki awoke at last. 

The light shining through a paper sliding door softly illuminated his half-waking vision. 

“This is…?” 

Lying faceup, Kojou absentmindedly looked around at the furnishings of the unfamiliar room. 

It was a fairly weathered building. The wood of the pillars and rafters had yellowed from the long months and years but gave off a reassuring sense of high quality nonetheless. It was an atmosphere rarely experienced on the man-made isle of Itogami Island. 

“I see… We were attacked by the weird chick in the priestess outfit…” 

The last thing Kojou could remember was falling after combat on the artificial isle’s beach. 

A mysterious woman in priestess attire had attacked them right after they’d escaped Natsuki Minamiya’s pursuit with their lives. The woman used a frightening ability that allowed her to force her way into the normal flow of time. Naturally, she’d pounded not only Kojou, but also Yukina and Kiriha Kisaki, without any of them able to lift a finger. 

Resigned to his own destruction, Kojou had summoned a Beast Vassal to escape from her pursuit. The ground beneath their feet had been decimated, and as a result, he, Yukina, and Kiriha had fallen into the sea. 

That was the last thing Kojou remembered. 

“Right, Himeragi—!” 

Remembering that Yukina and Kiriha had been caught up in the attack, Kojou tried to leap to his feet. 

But just as he was about to try, Kojou felt a faint resistance on his torso. It was a soft, warm weight, as if some mischievous cat had climbed onto him. 

Her soft, sleeping breaths slipped through the futon over Kojou, sinking deeply into his chest. 

“H-Himeragi…?!” 

Kojou froze. The scene before him was beyond his ability to process. 

Yukina Himeragi was snoozing away while cuddled up against Kojou. Her long eyelashes, plush lips, and beautiful face were the same as always, but she seemed even younger than usual, probably because she was sleeping and defenseless. 

For some reason, she was wearing a yukata, not her usual school uniform. Thanks to being cuddled up to him like that, her outfit covered everything except some of her collar. What leaped into Kojou’s vision were her pale neck and the distinct line of her slender collarbone…and the faint swell of her breasts. 

“Why is…Himeragi…with me…on a futon…in a yukata…?” 

Kojou fell into a panic as the image of Yukina in a yukata was burned into his mind. Calm down, he told himself, but having her bare flesh so very, very close was robbing Kojou of his capacity for calm, rational thought. 

Perhaps Kojou had conveyed that nervousness to her in the meantime, for he felt the sleeping Yukina stir. She sighed, rubbing her cheek against Kojou’s blanket in obvious regret. 

“…Mm…m?” 

Yukina let out an odd sound like a little animal as she slowly lifted her head. Her expression was hazy, and her vision was unfocused. Perhaps she was still half-asleep. That must have been why she didn’t seem to realize that her yukata had slipped, halfway exposing her immaculate shoulder. 

“Ah… Good morning, senpai…,” Yukina greeted him upon waking as she rubbed her eyes like a little girl. 

Kojou felt like he was holding a bomb with the safety turned off, staring at the sleepy-eyed girl as he said, “C-calm down, Himeragi… Let’s talk about this…” 

“Haaahnn,” she yawned. 

“L-let’s calmly…assess the situation and—” 

“?Senpai?!” 

That instant, Yukina’s eyes snapped open—with Kojou in front of her, she loomed over him. She’s gonna bite my head off, thought Kojou, his body cringing in fear. 

“I’m so glad you’re awake! Are you hurt?! How are your wounds?” she exclaimed. 

“Y-yeah…probably…,” Kojou, relieved, replied to Yukina’s earnest expression of concern. 

“I’m so glad,” said Yukina, sighing in relief. 

Against her back rested a full-metal spear, naked and totally deployed. This was the spear that had been taken from Yukina, the spear Kojou was nearly impaled by. Even if there was nothing she could have done, Yukina might have felt responsible nonetheless. 

But ironically, it was thanks to that very same Snowdrift Wolf that they had managed to drive off the girl in the priestess outfit. Yukina’s magic-nullifying spear had rendered her unable to activate her ability to insert time. This had allowed Kojou a chance to launch a counterattack. 

“…………………………………I see.” 

However, before he could tell Yukina as much, a girl with long, dark hair in an old-fashioned hairstyle poked her head out from under the same blanket that covered Kojou. His eyes widened at the sight as if he were watching something out of a horror flick. 

“Aaagh!” 

“She fell asleep beside you after nursing you through the night… It’s like some kind of cheap romantic comedy, complete with a yukata boob shot. This must be the Fourth Primogenitor’s animal magnetism at work. Though it annoys me, I shall take note. Perhaps I should say, that is a Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency for you, Yukina Himeragi?” 

“Kisaki?! Wh-why are you…there of all places…?!” 

Kojou posed the question in a halting voice as he gazed, dumbfounded, at Kiriha Kisaki crawling out from his own futon. 

Yukina’s face was frozen over, her eyebrows distinctly twitching as she muttered, “Senpai…in the same futon as Kisaki… What were you doing…?!” 

“You’re wrong! I only woke up just now! I don’t know anything about this!” 

“Yukina Himeragi, straighten your yukata already.” 

“…?!” 

When Kiriha bluntly pointed out the situation, Yukina hastily hid her collarbone under her disheveled yukata. Yukina mumbled a whining noise to herself, staring resentfully at Kojou enough that he averted his eyes, feeling tempted to turn away from her. 

Instead, he spoke to the other girl present. “So you’re going to properly explain what the heck’s been going on, Kiriha Kisaki?” 

“Before I do that, I would like to ask you—how much do you remember, Fourth Primogenitor?” 

Kiriha sat up as she posed a question of her own to Kojou. As he suspected, she was also wearing a yukata, just like Yukina was. Kojou, finally noticing, realized he was wearing a similar one, but for men. 

“…Up to when the chick in the priestess outfit attacked, and it looked like I was gonna get killed. I’m pretty sure she stole Himeragi’s spear and came after me with it…” 

“I see… Incidentally, how is your right arm? Any problem with it?” 

“Problem?” Kojou asked, puzzled. “What are you talking about?” 

Then he glanced down at his own right hand, whereupon his expression froze. 

Yukina strongly bit her lip, her eyes wavering with a look of visible fear. 

“Senpai?” 

Judging that he could not ignore the issue, Kojou sighed as he murmured, “I can’t…feel my right hand at all.” 

“Oh no.” Yukina’s shoulders quivered. 

“I thought as much.” Kiriha’s shoulders sank with a knowing expression. 

Kojou glared at her, perplexed, as he said, “You knew? About my right hand…?” 

“Yes. I allowed it to cradle my bountiful boobs, and yet, you showed no reaction at all.” Kiriha purposefully leaned forward to better accentuate her chest. 

“B…boobs… You mean that…?” 

Kojou’s gaze unwittingly drifted to Kiriha’s yukata. He was dumbfounded at the notion that he’d had a hand plunged into that bewitching valley yet had not noticed a thing. 

However, without a hint of shame, Kiriha shrugged her shoulders and said, “I lied.” 

“That was a lie?!” 

“Your right hand was shredded. After all, you recklessly used your bare hand to stop an activated Schneewaltzer—” 

“Oh…really…? Come to think of it, something like that happened once before…” 

Kojou forced a feeble smile as he murmured. Yukina remained silent with a neutral expression, perhaps amazed at the lack of tension in Kojou and Kiriha’s exchange. 

It was the second time that Snowdrift Wolf, a secret weapon of the Lion King Agency, had impaled Kojou. In the previous case, the injury induced a Beast Vassal to run amok, and the wound itself was half-solid, half-insubstantial. For a time, Kojou had been troubled by ill health that was a manifestation of leakage of his demonic energy. And this time, the symptom was a loss of feeling. 

In the first place, recovering from a wound inflicted by Snowdrift Wolf, a purging spear said to be able to destroy even a primogenitor, proved difficult, even with the Fourth Primogenitor’s regenerative abilities. 

“But, well, I suppose I must…praise your sound judgment in the matter,” Kiriha said in a rare consoling tone. “After all, there was no other way to drive off Paper Noise, having your own Beast Vassal attack you included. Though, thanks to that, the two of us nearly drowned to death with you.” 

“Paper Noise… Wait, you mean the chick in the priestess outfit? She called herself Shizuka, right?” Kojou asked. 

Yukina replied meekly, “Yes. She is first among the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency…and one of the mightiest Attack Mages in Japan.” 

Now that he’d experienced her strength firsthand, he didn’t feel very much like laughing off the stupid-sounding title of “mightiest in Japan.” If Koyomi Shizuka was a big shot in the Lion King Agency, he could understand her being able to wield Snowdrift Wolf. 

“The Bureau of Astrology does not like to acknowledge it, but I must tip my hat to her…” Kiriha shifted into speaking more casually. “She is a monster on par with a vampire primogenitor. I can only say that you did well to drive her off at the cost of only a single arm.” 

Yukina lowered her eyes in dejection as Kojou stared at his numb right hand. 

“I am sorry, senpai… It is because I allowed Snowdrift Wolf to be taken…” 

“It’s not something you should worry about, Himeragi. You had no way to stop her, right?” 

Koyomi Shizuka’s attack was over by the time they’d realized anything. It was impossible to block or evade it. Even being on guard was no help. It made no sense to blame Yukina. 

“More importantly, I’ve gotta go look for Nagisa—” 

Kojou, annoyed by Kiriha’s attempt to cuddle up to him, pushed her away and rose to his feet. Thinking he ought to first check his current location, he walked to the window and opened the shutters. 

Kojou froze like a smartphone hitting an error while turning on. 

He stopped sharply because the scene unfolding on the other side of the window was well beyond his expectations. 

Mountains, layered and folded together, towered before him, with evergreen trees covering their sharply inclined slopes. The faint white mist hovering in the air was probably steam from hot springs. In the distance, he could make out the snow-covered peak of Mt. Fuji. 

It was undeniable; this was picturesque scenery found nowhere on Itogami Island, the artificial isle of eternal summer. 

“Where is this…?!” 

Kojou and the others had been drowning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Why had he awakened in the mountains? 

Still confused, Kojou looked back as the room’s sliding screen suddenly opened with force. From there, a group of foreign girls dressed in various articles of patterned Japanese clothing poured into the room like an avalanche. 

“Room service! Sorry for the wait!” 

Wearing a frilly apron over her red, long-sleeved kimono to look like some sort of Japanese maid was a beautiful, glamorous blonde around twenty years old. Kojou remembered her face. 

“Tee-hee, we have arrived with your meal.” 

An elegant beauty in a blue faux-Japanese maid outfit reverently pressed three fingers of each hand to the floor as she bowed. 

“I’ll do my best with the massage!” A girl in a similar outfit but in yellow valiantly clenched a fist as she looked up at Kojou. 

“I shall wash your back in the bath…” 

“I can throw in little ecchi freebies, too…” 

Deeply suggestive smiles adorned the faces of the girls in black-and-white maid outfits as they crawled onto Kojou’s futon. Right around that point, Kojou finally recovered from his shock. 

“You girls…! What’s Vattler’s maid brigade doing here…?!” Kojou exclaimed in a shrill voice. 

In reality, the girls in the mysterious “maid” outfits were originally the daughters of royals and high officials of the countries neighboring the Warlord’s Empire, granted to Vattler as hostages in exchange for the safety of their mother nations, or so Kojou had heard. 

However, Vattler himself had little interest in hostages or women, so he treated the girls as simple guests, letting them live their lives as they pleased—enough that, to be blunt, Kojou wondered if Vattler let them have too much freedom. 

Kojou could not conceal his surprise at meeting the Oceanus Girls at that juncture. Their appearance before Kojou’s eyes meant that Vattler, Master of Serpents and battle maniac extraordinaire and plenipotentiary, had involved himself in the current incident, namely Nagisa’s disappearance. 

Yukina was the one to answer Kojou’s question, though it sounded difficult for her to speak the words. 

“Actually… Er, when we were on the verge of drowning, it was the Duke of Ardeal who brought us aboard…” 

Kojou’s shoulders slumped forward as he digested the facts. Vattler being in the area and recovering Kojou and the others after they’d tumbled into the sea—now that it had been said out loud, he recognized it as a likely enough story. When Vattler’s appearance was added to the mix, Koyomi Shizuka letting Kojou and the others go so easily made sense, too. 

“Then we’re inside Vattler’s ship? And this landscape is some kind of…3-D image, or…” 

“No, that is incorrect,” said the girl wearing the red Japanese maid outfit, smiling. “This is a Japanese hot spring hotel, at one of the hot springs in Hakone.” 

“H-Hakone…?! What are you all doing in a place like…?!” 

“We are on vacation.” 

The blue maid narrowed her eyes with delight. 

“Through the wise judgment of the Duke of Ardeal, the crew of the Oceanus Grave II has been permitted to spend New Year’s Day at a hot spring.” 

“O-oh…” 

So you’d be here even if you hadn’t brought us, thought Kojou with conflicting feelings. Certainly, he was grateful to have been brought from Itogami Island all the way to the mainland, but to be honest, he was in a bind from being led to a tourist spot. 

It would have been better if they’d been tossed out at a suitable harbor, but… 

Then, as if peering into Kojou’s thoughts, the other maids chimed in: 

“Fourth Primogenitor, please remember that…” 

“…Hakone is less than twenty kilometers from Kannawa Lake.” 

“It is close enough to reach by foot.” 

“…?!” 

Kojou stared in shock at the girls, smiling as if they saw right through him. 

Apparently, unbeknownst to Kojou and the others, they had been cast into the very epicenter of the incident.