Right Arm of the Saint by Gakuto Mikumo Page A

that so…”
    “Something to give her? How about you leave it with me?”
    “Er, well… I do, but I’ll just try again tomorrow. Bit of a troublesome thing.”
    Kojou thanked the elderly teacher, making his way out of the staff room. With only two days until summer break ended, Misaki Sasasaki seemed to be making the most of what was left of her vacation.
    This is becoming a real bother
, Kojou thought.
    If he could, he wanted to put the wallet into the owner’s hands ASAP. If not, he’d have a misunderstanding with that short-tempered junior high schooler, and
that
might get him suddenly impaled to death from her spear.
    Natsuki’s words,
Don’t get close to the Lion King Agency
, tugged at him, but trusting a nonhomeroom teacher to return a wallet with actual money in it seemed rather irresponsible, and Kojou wasn’t of a mind to request it.
    Leaning on a pillar of an adjoining corridor, Kojou absentmindedly gazed at the campus.
    Here in broad daylight in the middle of summer, there weren’t all that many students doing club activities. Even so, he could see athletics club members doing solo training here and there on the grounds.
    Cheerleaders were practicing a dance in the shadow of the school building. On the tennis court, club members seemed to be having practice matches against each other. As he watched the flutter and sway of the female members’ skirts, they made him remember Yukina Himeragi the day before.
    She had such a bizarre level of combat power she’d faced down a demon-race male and utterly crushed him, and her silver spear had annihilated a vampire’s Beast Vassal in a single instant. And the flushed look of her face when she held down her skirt over her pastel-colored panties. It was such an impactful scene, even if he thought of forgetting, it wasn’t something easy to forget at all. There may have been suspicious parts about her, but she really
was
a pretty girl.
    Those legs were pretty, too… Kojou clicked his tongue a little as he casually thought about that.
    At the same time a light dizziness assaulted him, his throat felt extremely parched. It was an unusually bad sign.
    “If she’d at least put a contact number or something in here…”
    To break his train of thought, Kojou hurriedly averted his eyes from the campus and opened up the wallet he’d picked up. It didn’t seem to be a luxury brand, but it was a nice wallet that he could tell had been well cared for.
    It had a faint, pleasant smell to it.
    The wallet itself was made of common, readily available textiles; in other words, this smell was no doubt the lingering scent of its owner. It was not the strong scent of perfume, but a gentle, comfortable, pleasant scent. Well, the point being, this must be what a girl smelled like—
    The instant he subconsciously thought about that, this time Kojou’s whole body was assaulted with a strange thirst.
    “Ugh…”
    Not good
, thought Kojou as he covered his own mouth.
    With a pale face, he locked his knees together as his shoulders shuddered a little.
Not now!
he thought as his lips twisted. Sharp, tapered canine teeth poked through the gap between his lips.
    However, it wasn’t that Kojou was in bad physical shape. What was causing him distress was a simple physiological reaction. However, this was an abominable, troublesome condition specific to vampires: the urge to drink blood.
    —
Not good not good not good not good…
    Kojou desperately wanted to fight the desire to drink human blood that gripped his entire body. He knew all too well the crimson-dyed hallucination filling his field of vision.
    There were still many things misunderstood by the world at large, but the species known as vampires did not drink the blood of others to satisfy hunger. Food and drink were sufficient to address simple hunger and thirst.
    Certainly vampires could replenish their magical energy through the act of drinking blood. Magic also existed that used blood as a catalyst.
    However, these were