From the Warlord's Empire (3 page)

But these were not the only reasons Kojou’s gaze did not leave her, for the instincts of the Fourth Primogenitor, the World’s Mightiest Vampire, warned him of danger.

Perhaps one might say he felt like he was face-to-face with a carnivorous beast, and should he avert his eyes for even a single moment, he would be attacked without hesitation. Perhaps it was more accurate to say it was like two master martial artists facing each other, neither making a move, each denying the other any opening. A precarious balance had been established between the staring, unmoving Kojou and Yukina’s silence. Even the slightest trigger would have surely broken that equilibrium in an instant.

And the one who created that trigger, sitting on the edge of the bed, was Nagisa.

“K-Kojou?! What are you doing—?!”

Nagisa rose up with a yelp. Her voice broke the spell shackling Kojou and Yukina.

Almost simultaneously, the flustered Kojou mumbled “um, um” as he backed up, while Yukina covered her breasts with both hands, turning without making a sound. Yukina’s fluttering hair, her white nape, her exposed back, and the smallness of the area of her body actually covered by clothes all flashed before Kojou’s eyes. The next moment, Yukina’s high sock-wrapped heel slammed into the side of Kojou’s face—

By the time Kojou realized he’d taken a spinning roundhouse kick, his body was in a splendid spin as he flew to the far side of the room. It was enough of an impact that a normal human’s skull might well have been half smashed.

Eeeeeek!
With a slight delay, he heard Yukina shriek. Kojou would have liked to comment about the roundhouse kick having come
before
the shriek, but of course he had no opportunity to do so at the moment. On the floor, facing up, unable to rise, Kojou pressed his right hand against his face. As blood gushed vividly from his nose, he made a weak murmur mixed with a sigh.

“…Gimme a break.”

That was the beginning of Kojou Akatsuki’s very long day.

“Um, senpai…your nosebleed…is it really all right now?”

Inside the monorail car used to commute to school, Yukina, dressed in her school uniform, looked up at Kojou as she inquired.

She had a black gig case for a bass guitar over her shoulder.

There wasn’t actually a musical instrument inside, but rather, the Lion King Agency’s secret weapon—a frighteningly powerful spirit spear granted to her for the purpose of eliminating vampire primogenitors. As Kojou watched Yukina—the watcher for Kojou Akatsuki, the Fourth Primogenitor—walk with that dangerous object never escaping her grasp, his mood became progressively more sullen.

“More or less. Anyway, I’m the one at fault. Not that I intended to peek, mind you,” Kojou apologized while rubbing his still-itchy nose.

The regenerative power of a vampire had healed the nasal bones broken by Yukina’s kick, but the nosebleed itself took a while to stop. But thanks to that, he had not been assailed by any vampiric urges—perhaps he should have been grateful for it.

“It’s all right… I’m not upset about it anymore.”

With a sigh in her voice, Yukina added, “And I did kick you full force.” Though her tone seemed to have resignation and embarrassment mixed in with it, she certainly gave off no hint of anger. A relieved expression came over Kojou’s face.

“Th-that’s good.”

“Er, well…I knew from the start that you were a pervert, senpai, so it is my fault for letting my guard down.”

“Eh?”

“I should have not forgotten the possibility such
accidental
behavior might arise from you, senpai.”

“Why are you acting like it’s a given I’d peek?! That really was an accident, you know. I mean, I’m sorry about the mistake, but still!”

“Hee-hee.” Yukina made a small laugh as she watched the flustered Kojou try to object.

Apparently she really was minded to forgive him. As Yukina suggested that “Yes, some soul-searching would be good” with a demure,
admonishing look on her face, Kojou’s lips twisted a bit as he exhaled and patted his chest in relief. However…

“That’s no good, Yukina. If you forgive this pervert so easily…!”

It was Nagisa who broke the reconciliatory mood, inserting herself as if to shield Yukina.

Wearing the same uniform as Yukina, she looked up at Kojou with anger apparent in her eyes.

Spread out beyond the monorail’s windows was a cloudless blue sky with an ultramarine sea. As the rays of the morning sun mercilessly illuminated the inside of the car, Nagisa’s shrill voice reverberated in spite of the restrained volume.

“I can’t believe it. There’s just no way. And how do you call barging into a girl’s room without knocking an
accident
? Kojou, you’re the worst. I told you yesterday before bed that Yukina was coming over to visit the next morning, didn’t I?”

“Ah…now that you mention it, I do sorta feel like you might’ve told me that…” Kojou’s face grimaced as he arrived at a rather vague memory. “But I didn’t hear anything about Himeragi changing clothes at our place. What were you two doing at that hour?”

“Just stop with the weird imagination already, geez! We were taking measurements for adjusting outfits for the sports festival.” Nagisa added with a crude snort, “I told you about that yesterday.” But even being told this, Kojou didn’t have any grasp of the circumstances whatsoever.

“…What do you mean, outfits for the sports festival? It’s all just gym jerseys, isn’t it?”

“No. These aren’t for matches, they’re cheerleading outfits. We can’t use the cheerleading club uniforms to cheer on our own class, now can we? So we have to make new ones. The home economics club girls are doing the detail work, and the boys are putting up the money for it.”

Nagisa babbled on, explaining details he’d never asked about. The sheer quantity of words that came out of Nagisa’s mouth was one of her few flaws, but at times like these he was grateful that she was a quick talker.

“Cheerleading uniforms…wait, Himeragi’s wearing one, too?”

Kojou raised his eyebrows doubtfully as he asked Yukina, who had a sullen look for some reason.

Though the sports festival was an official school event, there was no rule that said girls had to dress up to cheer people on. He could understand Nagisa, an active member of the cheerleading club, running off to any cheer event, but he felt it was a bit unexpected for Yukina to volunteer to participate in an event like this.

A gloomy expression came over Yukina’s graceful features as she spoke.

“I had intended to do no such thing, but I wasn’t able to refuse…”

She heaved a sigh, exhaling her anguish. “No, you couldn’t,” Nagisa said, her cheerful voice the complete opposite.

“All of the boys in our class put their heads to the floor and begged Yukina. If the Princess cheered them on in a cheerleading outfit, they’d do anything for her as her loyal servants and work their rear ends off to win for her.”

“All the boys bowed down?”

Kojou was taken aback by Nagisa’s explanation. Yukina covered her eyes with an even more awkward expression. So “Princess” was Yukina’s nickname, was it?
Not bad, brats,
Kojou thought with a smidgen of admiration. Apparently, without Kojou knowing it, Yukina had risen to the rank of class princess. He could imagine how awkward Yukina must have looked with a mob of classmates bowing down before her.

“Ordinarily I would’ve just blown them all off, but I can understand why the boys would say that. I mean, this is Yukina here, so I said, ‘Hey, girls, let’s work together on this.’”

For some reason Nagisa was awfully proud of it. Kojou finally had a decent grasp on the circumstances. “So you’re both gonna cheerlead together, then.”

“Tee-hee, nothing wrong with that. Ah, Kojou, maybe you wanted us to cheer you on?”

Kojou gave an indifferent reply and shook his head. “Nah, it’s all the same to me really.”

Nagisa’s expression, which tended to move around a lot, changed to an obvious frown for once. “Huh? Why not?! Doesn’t it make you happy?!”

“I’d get embarrassed to have my little sister cheering me on, all worked up over just an intramural sports tournament.” Kojou let his comment loose with a very blunt tone. He’d only meant to convey the opinion that he had no interest taking pleasure in making his own little sister
play cheerleader, but Yukina, listening from the side, seemed to derive a different meaning from it.

“E-embarrassing…outfit…” Mumbling as if in shock, Yukina hung her head in dejection. To such an overly serious girl, wearing a cheerleader outfit must have been a high hurdle indeed.

“Er, no. I’m not saying I’d be embarrassed to have you cheer me on, Himeragi.”

“Hah? What’s this? Yukina’s fine, but it’s embarrassing if
I
cheer you on?!”

“It ain’t that. I’m just sayin’, an intramural sports tournament’s just for fun, so you wouldn’t need to go out of your way to come see me at a match,” Kojou explained while waving his hand, looking annoyed at the bother.

Nagisa looked up at his face for a while with her lips in a pout. And as her expression suddenly went stiff, she inquired in a vaguely concerned tone. “…Kojou, does it still bother you? I mean…about last year’s tournament.”

“Tournament?”

For a moment, Kojou seriously didn’t know what she was talking about, looking back into his little sister’s eyes as he replied. Noticing that, as rarely happened, she seemed hesitant to say something, he finally understood the meaning of her question.

Back when Kojou had been part of the middle school basketball team, he had the youthful experience of being isolated on a team that was obsessed with victory. It had thoroughly depressed him and was the trigger for him having quit basketball.

Watching Kojou while speaking of her coming to cheer him on must have made Nagisa remember all that.

“Ahh, nah. Has nothin’ to do with that at all.”

“Really?”

“Not one little thing to do with me. And it’s not like I hate basketball or anything.”

As Kojou said it, he shrugged his shoulders as if concealing embarrassment.

It was true that he didn’t pay any heed to the past. Kojou wasn’t the only one to have quit his club when graduating to high school, after all;
it held no special meaning. The guys from the basketball club at the time were striving to do well even now.

Regardless, in his current state, Kojou couldn’t seriously immerse himself into sports. Kojou was, after all, the World’s Mightiest Vampire. He couldn’t be using the extraordinary physical and demonic abilities possessed by a “primogenitor” in the middle of ordinary high school varsity sports.

But Nagisa, who didn’t know of those circumstances, smiled happily as she listened to Kojou’s words.

“Is that so? So, maybe we can still see your match at this sports festival, then?”

“Not necessarily gonna be in a match like you’re hopin’ for, though.”

Kojou felt a faint throbbing feeling as he tossed the comment out.

In the sports festival, high school boys had three events: basketball, table tennis, and badminton. It had not yet been decided that Kojou had any role to play.

In the first place, they’d probably prioritize people with experience for the competition, so there was a high chance Kojou would be assigned to the basketball court.
Maybe that’s okay,
thought Kojou.

Though he missed being able to have serious fun in intense team competition like he used to, if he thought of it as giving his worried little sister a freebie, playing while holding back quite a bit wasn’t so bad at all.

“Can’t be helped. Well, if you do get an event we definitely have to cheer you on. Right, Yukina?”

Nodding, in a good mood for some reason, Nagisa sought Yukina’s agreement.

For a moment, Yukina’s eyes blinked in bewilderment. No doubt she never imagined she’d be made to cheer Kojou on, too.

To Yukina, who was worried about wearing a cheerleader outfit at all, it had to have been a very troublesome invitation. In the first place, Yukina had been dispatched as the Fourth Primogenitor’s watcher; cheering Kojou on in a sports festival wasn’t exactly part of her mission.

However, with Nagisa’s radiant face turned toward her, it was no surprise she just couldn’t say no.

“I suppose you’re right…I’ll cheer, too.”

Lastly, Yukina made a sigh, as if conveying to Kojou her grudging
surrender. Seeing the faint, strained smile on her face, Kojou made a pained smile of his own. A moment later, the monorail arrived at the station they were heading to.

As usual, the three of them got out of the car at the same time, trading the usual formalities.

It was a common, everyday scene…

Kojou had not yet noticed, but in Itogami Harbor, visible from the monorail car’s windows, was moored a single, unfamiliar, highly extravagant ship.

Kojou parted ways with Yukina and Nagisa right about when they arrived at the school gates. Yukina and Nagisa turned toward the middle school campus a short distance away while Kojou went straight ahead to the high school building.

Itogami Island was the Island of Everlasting Summer, floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Even halfway into September, there was not even the smallest subatomic hint of autumn whatsoever; the merciless morning rays of the midsummer sun poured down upon the school grounds.

As Kojou ran into the entrance, feeling much like a slime mold frantically trying to escape ultraviolet light, the preceding visitor was right before him. A schoolgirl was changing her shoes in front of the shoe lockers for Kojou’s class.

She had a showy hairstyle and refined perfume. With good fashion sense, she wore her school uniform in just the right ways to stand out from her classmates.

“Good morning, Kojou. To think, you arrived on time for once.”

She spoke to him in an easygoing tone like she was one of the boys. Though her shapely lips were curled into a grin, it was a mysteriously affable and memorable expression. She took a large sports bag placed right by her loafers and tossed it toward him.

“What’s all this stuff, Asagi?” Kojou asked casually as he retrieved his own footwear.