Vibration.
Dust sifted from the ceiling of a lakeside cabin near Mount Fuji. A tourist glanced out the window at the distant, faintly glowing peak. "Is... is it going to erupt?"
---
*On the rooftop,* the three vampire hunters felt the tremor ripple through the concrete beneath their feet. Their predatory calm shattered into alarm.
An earthquake? There was no warning!
"...The aftershocks are continuing. We descend. *Now.*" Episod's formerly placid face twisted into a snarl. Their lockdown of the station was temporary. A major quake would bring emergency services, chaos—and a potential escape route for their dying prey.
"Patience. The tremors aren't intensifying," Guillotinecutter murmured, though his eyes were narrowed in calculation. After a tense pause, he revised his stance. "Nevertheless. We proceed." Variables were to be eliminated.
The clean, waiting game was over.
---
*Underground, on the blood-slick platform,* the world had narrowed to a single, horrific point.
Sakurai Saki stood perfectly still, his hand clamped around the throat of the golden-haired vampire, lifting her mangled form off the ground. The tremors meant nothing. The world could have ended in that moment, and he would not have noticed.
"...You are prepared to die, aren't you?" His voice was a low, dead thing, devoid of inflection.
Kissshot gasped against the crushing pressure, drowning in a killing intent so dense it felt physical. "I... didn't... kill... her."
Sakurai's gaze didn't waver from the scene a few feet away—the small, still form, the vibrant hair bow lying like a discarded toy. Grief, he realized with a cold, clinical detachment, had not yet arrived. There was only a vast, hollow silence where pain should have been, and he pitied himself for it.
His grip tightened. With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, he hurled her broken body against the tiled wall. She slid down, a smear of crimson painting her descent. Fresh blood—Chika's blood—trickled from the corner of her mouth.
Sakurai watched, unmoved.
"Ah. I almost forgot."
He walked toward her, his footsteps echoing in the cavernous silence. He lifted his foot.
**THUD.**
A brutal, precise kick sank into her abdomen. Kissshot's body jackknifed, a silent scream contorting her features.
**THUD.**
Another. Her back arched off the floor.
"Her flesh. Her blood." Sakurai's voice was a flatline. "I want you to *vomit it all out*."
**THUD. THUD. THUD.**
Systematic, merciless impacts. Kissshot writhed, each blow undoing the meager regeneration the stolen life had granted. She was weaker now than before her "meal."
"P-please… don't kill me," she choked out, the words mangled by pain and terror.
A humorless, cruel smile touched Sakurai's lips. "Is this all a legendary vampire amounts to? You seemed to be enjoying your feast moments ago." He leaned closer, his shadow engulfing her. "The 7,185 you've slain before tonight… did you dine so messily on them as well?"
A true monster. A consumer of lives. And now, a coward.
"...Not her… I didn't…" Kissshot's pride had evaporated, leaving only raw, animal fear. She tried to twist her limbless torso toward his feet, a gesture of abject submission.
Sakurai kicked her away, his disgust visceral. "Don't touch me."
It was pathetic. A beast that fought to the end commanded a shred of respect. One that begged at the brink deserved only contempt.
"Save… me…" The plea was a wet, broken whisper, her golden eyes wide with a final, desperate hope.
Sakurai observed the bleeding stumps where her limbs had been severed. So this is why. Crippled, starving, she took what walked into her tomb. The logic of a wounded animal. It changed nothing.
"A vampire, bleeding to death on a train platform," he mused, the smile returning, colder than before. "Poetic."
From the darkness of the access tunnel to his right, a new, smooth voice cut through the tension.
"It seems we have a… proactive bystander."
Sakurai turned. Episod stood there, pristine in his white uniform, a large crucifix held casually at his side. The hunter surveyed the scene—the brutalized vampire, the dead girl, the emotionally void boy—with detached interest.
"Leave the creature to me," Episod offered, his tone patronizing, soothing. "An ordinary student, witnessing such horrors… you must be terrified. It's alright. I'll handle this." As he spoke, a subtle, compelling glow flickered in his golden eyes—a vampire's hypnotic suggestion.
It washed over Sakurai Saki and dissipated, utterly ineffective.
"Was it you," Sakurai asked, his voice still eerily calm, "who drove her here?"
"Indeed. A necessary hunt." Episod replied, engaging casually. The prey was as good as dead; humoring this witness was no risk. He glanced at Chika's body, his expression morphing into one of performative sympathy. "This poor girl… was she dear to you? My condolences."
Found you.
The last thread of Sakurai Saki's composure, already frayed by the side effect's emotional overload, snapped silently.
"Good," he said.
As he spoke, a dark, shimmering mist began to seep from his skin, coalescing around him like a second shadow. The air grew heavy, charged with a palpable, gathering fury.
Sakurai Saki's face was a mask of absolute zero. His eyes held nothing—no rage, no sorrow, only a void that promised annihilation.
"Then I'll kill you."
The next moment, the world erupted.
RUMBLE—!!
A tsunami of black mist exploded from Sakurai Saki, engulfing the entire platform in an impenetrable, light-devouring shroud. Lights flickered violently, then died with a chorus of dying sparks. From within the choking darkness came a sound—a low, guttural roar of pure, unfiltered wrath.
Episod's smug confidence vanished, replaced by primal terror. He scrambled backward into the gloom.
Then, a single point of brilliance pierced the fog.
BANG!
A lance of fiery red light, impossibly fast, cleaved through the black mist and struck Sakurai Saki square in the forehead. The light in his eyes guttered out instantly. His body went rigid, then crumpled to the blood-stained tiles like a marionette with its strings cut. The voracious black mist swirled violently before retreating, siphoned back into his motionless form.
"…Don't waste time toying with insects."
Priest Guillotinecutter lowered his still-smoking, customized firearm, stepping out from the shadow of a support column.
"Hah! The age of firearms, my primitive friend." Episod let out a shaky laugh, his bravado returning. He'd been certain death was upon him. To think the threat was so… fragile. He spun his crucifix idly. "Just another brat who awakened a minor power. Thought he could play hero."
"Insects remain insects. An angry insect cannot harm a man."
"Enough chatter. Clean up the mess." The priest lit a cigarette, its tip glowing like a malevolent eye in the dimness. He glanced at the hulking figure of Dramaturgy lumbering in from the tunnel. "You're late."
"…Hm?" Dramaturgy's crimson gaze swept the platform, settling on the small, still form of 'Fujiwara Chika.' A frown creased his brutish features. "Hanakawa's Cat. Why is it here?"
The girl who entered hadn't been human at all. From their perch, the distinction had been blurred by distance.
"Who cares," the priest exhaled a plume of smoke, eyeing the aberration's corpse. "A resentment-born cat, taking a form to enact revenge… only to sacrifice itself for a vampire. Genuine sentiment among monsters. Rare." He'd seen symbiosis, but this was different. Perhaps the cat intended to devour the weakened Kissshot and was countered. Or it was bait in a larger trap…
"Not dead yet," Dramaturgy rumbled, nodding toward the two figures on the ground—the vampire and the boy.
"A vampire only dies when nearly exsanguinated. She just fed," Episod pointed out.
"I can drain her. A vampire dies if all its blood is taken by its own kind. But beware a final, desperate surge," warned the two-meter-tall behemoth with his crown of dark curls.
On the ground, a minuscule drama unfolded.
Kissshot inched forward, agony in every movement. A few more centimeters… just to his neck. His blood. If she could taste the blood of a Superpower User, she could rally, she could fight back!
Before her, Sakurai Saki's eyes fluttered open. His expression, once a mask of frozen fury, had softened inexplicably. A faint, almost gentle smile touched his lips as he looked past her, toward the 'girl's' body. Kissshot observed this shift.
'That girl… she truly meant everything to him.'
'What's the play here?' Sakurai's mind, now cleared of the emotional static, was racing. A shattered skull was an inconvenience, not a defeat. His body was a fortress; its apparent weaknesses were deliberate limitations. He had fallen intentionally, buying a moment to think. The side effect—the emotional amplification—had been dangerously overwhelming. He'd seen 'Chika' and forgotten to strategize.
But it wasn't Chika.
Hope, cold and strategic, rekindled. He listened to the hunters' arrogant post-mortem.
There was another way. A simpler, more violent one. But if he wanted Kissshot—the Aberration Killer, a weapon of immense potential—to become his utterly devoted asset, his exclusive property… a more personal investment was required.
He shifted, an almost imperceptible movement, bringing the pale skin of his neck closer to her blood-flecked lips.
Kissshot didn't question the offering. It was her last hope. A sharp, piercing pain as her fangs found his artery. She began cautiously, then froze.
The blood that flooded her mouth… it wasn't mere sustenance. It was a tempest, an ocean of raw, potent energy that made her previous meals taste like ash. Her restraint shattered. She drank greedily, desperately.
In seconds, Sakurai Saki's face drained of all color. The vibrant life-force vanished from his body; his breathing ceased.
Too much! Panic shot through Kissshot. She couldn't lose this—this miraculous source. In a frantic, instinctive act of preservation, she forced her own ancient, potent blood back into him, aiming to turn him, to make him a permanent, subservient part of her existence.
But his body rebelled. Halfway through the conversion, his system violently expelled her blood, rejecting it with a biological disgust that left her stunned.
Yet she persisted. The master vampire poured her will into the struggle. Finally, after a desperate, silent battle waged in their shared veins, a fraction of her essence took hold.
1%. Sakurai Saki's physiology now contained a minute, irrevocable trace of the vampire.
The effort utterly spent her. Kissshot collapsed beside him, consciousness fleeing.
The entire exchange, from bite to collapse, lasted less than a minute. Their movements had been slight, shrouded in the aftermath of mist and shadow.
But not slight enough.
The three hunters, their conversation lulled, had been watching. The strange, intimate struggle on the floor had not escaped their notice. A new, unsettling variable had just been introduced to their clean-up operation.
They had watched the entire exchange, allowing it to unfold. It was, in their eyes, a desperate gambit by a dying creature. If it drained the last of Kissshot's energy, all the better. A vampire stripped of her final means of retaliation was nothing but a trophy waiting to be claimed.
So what if she creates a minion? A crippled sire could at most produce a ghoul—a mindless, low-tier creature closer to a zombie than a true vampire.
As anticipated, the 'subordinate' rose. The grievous wound on his forehead knitted itself shut in seconds.
The priest raised his pistol, his aim clinical. BANG.
The bullet struck Sakurai Saki's temple—and sparked, deflected as if hitting tempered steel, clattering harmlessly to the side.
"You've got to be kidding me…" Episod's smirk vanished, replaced by a mask of disbelief. He hurled his silver crucifix, a weapon designed to sear vampire flesh and halt regeneration.
It grazed Sakurai's arm, dissolving a coin-sized patch of skin.
"Huh? Is that all?" Episod muttered.
Before the words finished, the damaged flesh regenerated, smooth and unblemished. The blonde hunter took an involuntary step back.
Sakurai Saki's lips curved into a thin, dangerous smile. "Is that all?"
The three hunters tensed, their casual superiority evaporating. The situation had just veered wildly off-script.
Beep-boop Beep-boop
A cheerful ringtone sliced through the tension. Sakurai Saki glanced at the screen, and his expression softened into something disturbingly genuine.
"Excuse me," he said, as if interrupting a tedious meeting. "I need to take this."
He answered the phone, turning his back to the three lethal predators. "Moshi moshi?"
"Hello! Saki-kun~ Can you hear me?" Fujiwara Chika's voice, bright and alive, filled his ear.
The hunters didn't wait for an invitation. They moved as one.
"I can hear you." Sakurai said, tilting his head just enough for a whistling crucifix to sail past his ear. In the same motion, he pivoted into a graceful spin-kick that connected with Dramaturgy's rushing form, followed by a second, thunderous kick to the chest.
BOOM!
The impact echoed through the shuddering station like a tolling bell.
CRASH!
Dramaturgy's massive body was launched across the platform, shattered the safety railing, and tumbled onto the train tracks below.
"What was that noise? What are you doing?" Chika asked, puzzled by the distant cacophony.
"Why didn't you answer my call earlier?" Sakurai inquired, sidestepping a close-range jab from the priest with the ease of someone swatting a fly. He shot a glare at Episod, who was fumbling for another weapon; the hunter froze under that icy gaze.
"Were you worried about me?! Eh! I'm so happy!" Chika's voice bubbled with glee.
As she spoke, black mist began to seep from Sakurai's pores once more, rapidly thickening into an impenetrable shroud that swallowed the platform. From within the gloom, a fully-formed soldier clad in shifting darkness materialized, leveling a long spear.
Sakurai held the phone slightly away from his mouth. His voice, when he spoke next, was flat and absolute. "Kill him."
He might have been ordering the disposal of garbage.
The mist-soldier lunged, its spear a blur. The priest barely dodged, and the two became entangled in a swift, silent duel.
Simultaneously—
ROAR!!!
Dramaturgy erupted from the tracks below, leaping back onto the platform with enough force to crater the concrete. His arms morphed into colossal, serrated blades, his body dissolving into a cloud of mist before reforming instantly behind Sakurai Saki. The giant sword rose high, muscles coiling like steel springs, and swept down with obliterating force.
"Was your phone dead?" Sakurai asked Chika, his tone still gentle.
His body moved with contrasting, brutal efficiency. He turned, not even fully facing the threat, and raised a single finger.
CLANG!
The monstrous blade stopped dead, its edge resting against his fingertip.
Another kick, almost bored in its delivery. BANG!
Dramaturgy was airborne again, crashing through a row of plastic seats.
More soldiers emerged from the roiling black fog. Two, four, eight—a silent, growing legion of shadows with glinting spear tips, encircling the three hunters completely.
"Well, I stayed at Kaguya-san's last night and had too much fun, so I forgot to charge it," Chika babbled, her words tumbling out in a rush. "It wasn't that I didn't want to answer, I couldn't!" She was terrified he'd think she was ignoring him.
"Are you home now?" Sakurai Saki asked, finally sitting down on a nearby waiting bench. He crossed his legs, the picture of repose, and watched his Black Mist Legion methodically close the noose around the beleaguered hunters.
The Black Mist Legion. The offensive Superpower User he had just unsealed. And it was the sheer, overwhelming logic of this power—the calculus of absolute force—that had finally burned away the last of the emotional haze, clearing his mind for the clean, cold work at hand.
"Saki-kun I'm in the bath right now" Chika's voice was playful, followed by a soft splash and the gentle gurgle of water.
"Oh, by the way, why did you call?"
Sakurai Saki was silent for a moment, the sounds of struggle around him muted by the fog. He answered softly, "No reason. I just… suddenly wanted to hear your voice."
On the other end, Fujiwara Chika went utterly still. Several seconds of stunned silence passed before she replied, a faint tremor in her voice, "I… I see…"
At the Fujiwara Residence, Chika slumped against the smooth ceramic of the bathtub, her grip on the phone suddenly shaky.
He had never spoken to her like that before. Not in half a year. If they weren't technically "just friends," she'd have sworn it was couple's talk.
'That's basically a sweet nothing.' A fierce, rosy blush spread from her cheeks down her neck. What was he doing over there? It sounded so chaotic in the background.
"Saki-kun, are you home yet?"
"Not yet. Still tidying up some loose ends." Sakurai Saki's gaze swept over the three hunters, still desperately fending off the relentless black mist soldiers. A flicker of impatience crossed his face.
"Oh? What kind of 'loose ends'?"
Chika lifted a slender leg from the water, watching pale red, soapy droplets trail down her skin and fall from her toes.
Plop.
The sound of water was clear in Sakurai's ear. He leaned back on the bench, staring up at the cracked platform ceiling. "Collecting a debt. Someone took something of mine. I'm here to reclaim it."
"You should head back soon, it's really late," Chika urged, concern coloring her tone.
"You should get to bed early too. Good night." His voice was a gentle caress over the line.
"Good night~"
The call ended with a soft click. Sakurai Saki stood, the last trace of warmth evaporating from his expression.
He stepped through the ranks of his silent soldiers, who parted for him, and looked down at the three hunters forced to their knees, the tips of shadowy spears pressing against their throats. Their eyes burned with a mix of hatred and bitter regret.
"Let us go," Episod spat, "and Kissshot's limbs will be returned to you."
Sakurai Saki tilted his head, a look of mock contemplation on his face. Then he smiled, an expression that held no warmth. "That's strange. You were all barking so confidently earlier. Why have you stopped?"
"You—!" Episod jerked against his restraints.
In that instant, a spear shot forward, piercing clean through his shoulder. He screamed.
Sakurai Saki watched, his face an impassive mask. "…To be honest, I much preferred your earlier, more arrogant demeanor. Could you please bring it back?"
Two hours later, Sakurai Saki arrived at his apartment.
Trailing silently behind him was a small, blonde vampire girl—limbs restored, but her regal, mature form shrunk to that of an elementary schooler. She watched his back, golden eyes unreadable.
"Kissshot Acerola-Orion Heartunderblade. Quite a mouthful." Sakurai pushed open the door to his modest rented apartment. He turned and gave her a smile so bright it was almost incongruous. "From today, you're my partner. Let's get along!"
"Heartunderblade… hm. I'll call you Shinobu from now on. It's a good name, don't you think?" He closed the door, sealing them in the quiet, mundane space.
Shinobu said nothing, simply following him inside. Sakurai didn't press her.
He was fully aware of his mistake.
"You lived. The one I care about didn't die. What a happy ending, right?" His cheerful words were met with a sharp, icy glare from Shinobu.
Finally, she spoke, her voice low. "That Hanakawa's Cat… it held a grudge against you."
Sakurai's smile faded. "Are you saying that by killing it, you were doing me a favor? And that I was wrong to punish you for it?"
"You understand perfectly." Her reply was flat.
The air grew heavy with the unspoken tension.
"I apologize." Sakurai's voice was clear, devoid of evasion. "That was my error. I won't deny it."
"Hmph." Shinobu turned, walking into the living room to stand stiffly beside the sofa.
"Did saving