“Are you sure this is your mission?”
“Senpai, what do you mean by that?” Yukina’s brow furrowed.
“This is a mission personally issued by the Three Holy Ones. Of course I wouldn’t remember it wrong.”
“Never mind the Fourth Progenitor—I’ll tentatively accept that identity. But as you can see, I am just an ordinary high school student.” Hikigaya gestured vaguely at himself.
“I shouldn’t have anything to do with danger, right?”
“Senpai, do you have absolutely no self-awareness?” Yukina’s eyes widened.
“As the Fourth Progenitor, you are lurking in the heart of Japan, hiding your true identity even from your family. Doesn’t that mean you have some kind of purpose?”
“What purpose?”
“For example—creating familiars in Chiba in secret, then dominating the local prestigious families, then quickly bringing Chiba under your command, then using Chiba as a base to radiate out to Tokyo, ultimately dominating all of Japan…” She paused, as if adding a final flourish, “and taking all the young and beautiful women in Japan—”
“Stop!”
Hachiman Hikigaya’s head was pounding.
What kind of script for a chaotic hero’s erotic life was this?
Did it really have anything to do with him at all?
He could barely dominate his own sleep schedule, let alone an entire prefecture.
“Himeragi-san. Thank you for thinking so highly of me, but isn’t this kind of delusion too strange?”
“It’s not a delusion.” She looked genuinely offended.
“Isn’t a Progenitor supposed to build their own Empire of Blood? Otherwise, why would Hikigaya-senpai be lurking in Chiba as an ordinary high school student?”
“Himeragi.” Hikigaya pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Is there a possibility—just a small one—that I had been living in Chiba all along before I became the Fourth Progenitor?”
Yukina stared at him.
“Become the Fourth Progenitor?”
She said the words like he had just claimed to have become the moon.
“What kind of joke is that? Senpai, do you mean that not long ago you were still a human?”
Hikigaya looked at Himeragi Yukina’s shocked expression and nodded, confirming her statement.
“To be precise, before last summer vacation, I was just an ordinary male high school student.”
Ordinary, he repeated in his head.
Dead-fish eyes.
No friends.
Socially invisible.
Completely, utterly ordinary.
He wasn’t lying.
Although Senpai’s dead-fish eyes radiated an ominous aura—she would admit that—and although Himeragi Yukina tried her best to find flaws in Hikigaya’s expression, no matter how she looked at it, Hikigaya didn’t look like he was lying.
No, no, no.
Yukina recalled her professional knowledge.
This had completely deviated from common sense.
“Ordinary humans do indeed have the possibility of becoming a vampire. But becoming a Progenitor is impossible!”
She leaned forward, her voice urgent.
“Senpai, a so-called Progenitor is the most ancient and long-lived primordial vampire. Cursed with immortality by the vanished gods themselves!”
“I know that much.” Hikigaya shrugged.
“The Forgetting War King, the Eye of Extinction, and the Chaos Princess—they’re all people who have lived from a distant era until now, right?”
Although he was just an ordinary high school student, Hikigaya at least had this kind of popularized legendary common sense.
He read light novels.
He watched anime.
He knew his mythology, even if he preferred the versions where the protagonist stayed home and didn’t get involved in world-ending conspiracies.
“Then where did you find the gods to curse you, Senpai?” Yukina’s voice grew smaller.
“Or did you devour…”
Her expression shifted.
A new possibility—dark and terrifying—dawned on her face.
“Senpai… you didn’t completely devour a Progenitor, did you?”
Hikigaya blinked.
“No. No, I don’t think so. I would remember eating someone, wouldn’t I?”
“The possibility of devouring only arises when a superior is against an inferior, or when the power difference is not large. No matter how you think about it, the status of a human makes it impossible to devour a Progenitor.” Yukina’s eyes narrowed.
“Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you, Senpai, are not human!”
Hikigaya rolled his eyes so hard he nearly strained something.
He was, at least, born of his parents.
Although it seemed like only Komachi was the biological child at home—a running joke he refused to examine too closely—from a genetic perspective, he was undoubtedly human.
Two arms, two legs, questionable life choices.
The full package.
“Before last summer vacation, I was indeed a genuine human. But after returning from the trip to Itogami Island…” He paused.
“Then how specifically did you change?”
“Regrettably, I don’t have any memories related to this. It’s as if the relevant memories were deliberately erased. If I try to recall them intentionally…” He winced.
“I get an exceptionally splitting headache.”
“How could there be such a thing…”
Himeragi Yukina fell into deep thought.
Except for not knowing why he became the Fourth Progenitor, she concluded, Hachiman Hikigaya is undoubtedly just an ordinary male high school student.
And even among male high school students, he belongs to the harmless type.
The harmless type with dead-fish eyes and a caffeine addiction and a little sister who could apparently defuse him with a single karate chop.
Hikigaya, who was sitting opposite her, was extremely awkward.
Although he had the excellent—no, tolerable—experience of talking to three beautiful girls in the Service Club, he was still exceptionally unaccustomed to being alone in a room with a girl as pretty as Yukina.
Pretty, he admitted.
Objectively pretty.
Like a painting.
A dangerous painting that might be authorized to kill me.
Although the content of their conversation didn’t have any romantic atmosphere—it was mostly about his classification as a national-level threat—it still made Hikigaya tense up subconsciously.
His shoulders were stiff.
His coffee was getting cold.
His fangs were carefully retracted.
“Speaking of which, Himeragi.” Hikigaya set down his cup.
“Have you thought about your questions?”
“Eh?” Yukina blinked, pulled from her thoughts.
“What questions do I have?”
“I mean regarding the mission.” He met her eyes.
“Don’t you have even the slightest doubt?”
“Doubt… what?”
She really doesn’t see it, Hikigaya realized.
She really, truly doesn’t see it.
He sighed.
“Himeragi. They sent a middle school girl—alone—to monitor and potentially erase the strongest vampire in existence. Does that sound like a reasonable assignment to you?”
Yukina opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
“I… am well-trained,” she said finally, though her voice had lost some of its certainty.
“I’m sure you are.” Hikigaya’s voice was gentle—gentler than he intended.
“But that’s not what I’m asking.”
What I’m asking, he thought, is whether your bosses sent you here to succeed…
or to be a sacrificial lamb.
But he didn’t say that.
Some truths were too heavy for a middle schooler to carry.
Instead, he just picked up his coffee, took a long sip, and waited for her to figure it out herself.
This girl really was the very simple type.
It wasn’t that she was an idiot—she was clearly intelligent, well-trained, and sharp in her own way.
But she just didn’t look at others with malice.
She took things at face value.
She believed in her mission the way a child believed in the sun rising.
Hikigaya always felt a deep sense of guilt when saying these kinds of things to her.
It was like explaining to a puppy that not everyone who throws a stick wants to play fetch.
“Himeragi. Do you really think the Lion King Organization sent you here just to monitor me?”
“Isn’t that the case?” She tilted her head, genuinely confused.
“Otherwise, why would they give me the highest-grade weapon, the Yukihira? If I have this powerful anti-demon spear in hand, I can hold my own against even a Progenitor for a while.”
“You said it yourself.” Hikigaya’s expression became serious—deeper than his usual deadpan.
“You said ‘hold your own for a while.’ Have you never thought about what happens after that while?”
Yukina blinked.
“Hypothetically,” Hikigaya continued, his voice quiet, “let’s say the Fourth Progenitor you were monitoring wasn’t a fake like me—someone who just wants to drink Max Coffee and avoid social interaction—but the true Fourth Progenitor. The natural disaster. The walking apocalypse.”
He leaned forward slightly.
“Do you really think you’d have a chance of surviving?”
Yukina’s lips parted.
No words came out.
“With just one Yukihira and a novice demon slayer…” Hikigaya pressed, though there was no cruelty in his voice—only a weary kind of honesty.
“What do you think the chances of survival are against the actual Fourth Progenitor?”
The answer is zero.
“There must be plenty of demon slayers stronger than you in the Lion King Organization,” Hikigaya said.
“Veterans. Experts. People who have fought supernatural threats and lived to tell the tale.”
He let the silence stretch.
“If the opponent were truly the strongest vampire… then it would be more logical for the Three Saints you mentioned to carry out this mission personally.”
Logical, he said.
Not heroic.
Not honorable.
Logical.
“That’s…” Yukina’s voice faltered.
“Well…”
She had never considered such a possibility.
As a Sword Shaman raised by the Lion King Organization since childhood, Yukina had never questioned the basic premises of her missions.
Orders were orders.
The Three Saints were wise.
The mission was sacred.
But come to think of it…
With the Lion King Organization’s intelligence capabilities—their networks, their spies, their ancient arts of divination—could they really not know that Senior Hikigaya was just a harmless high school student?
A bit gloomy, yes.
A bit cynical, absolutely.
But harmless.
Could it be possible that the Three Saints knew the whole story perfectly well?
Perhaps even better than Hikigaya himself?
Then what exactly was the purpose of sending her here?
Yukina wasn’t stupid.
Following Hachiman Hikigaya’s simple prompting—just a few gentle questions, nothing more—she seemed to grasp a certain thread of logic in an instant.
And then the memories came flooding back.
[I’m not asking that. I’m asking how you feel about him. Or rather, is he your type?]
[Don’t react so strongly. Although this child’s eyes do look a bit rotten, his features are quite good. Besides, his eyes won’t always be in that state.]
The strange words and attitudes of the Three Saints flashed through her mind.
Their half-smiling voices.
Their knowing glances.
Their insistence that she—specifically she—be the one to carry out this mission.
Not a veteran.
Not an expert.
Her.
Yukina’s pupils dilated.
Though she had never been in love—though her training had left no room for such frivolous things—she vaguely understood the true purpose of the Three Saints.
They weren’t sending a demon slayer to eliminate a threat.
They were sending…
Her face flushed bright red.
From her cheeks to her ears to the tips of her shoulders, a deep, burning crimson spread like wildfire across fair skin.
She looked down at her hands, then at the floor, then anywhere that wasn’t Hachiman Hikigaya’s dead-fish eyes.
“Ah,” she said, very quietly.
“Ah?” Hikigaya repeated, confused.
“I…” Yukina’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I need a moment.”
Hikigaya watched as the professional, mission-focused Sword Shaman who had been ready to discuss “erasure” with clinical detachment suddenly transformed into a flustered middle school girl who couldn’t meet his gaze.
What did I say?
he wondered.
I just asked some logical questions.
Why is she the color of a fire truck?
“Senpai,” Yukina said, still not looking at him.
“Yes?”
“Could you… pretend you didn’t see any of this?”
“I don’t even know what ‘this’ is.”
“Good.” She nodded once, sharply.
“That’s good.”
Women, Hikigaya thought, taking a long sip of his now-cold coffee, are completely incomprehensible.
Even the ones who are supposed to kill me.