#might redo these digitally if i have the motivation

[samwise1548]

Doodle dump of scenes from the new Lego Dragons Rising season (that I'm just now binging). Theyre still doing my boy Jay dirty it seems :'(

------

[ID: Seven pictures of doodles done on lined paper of various scenes from Dragons Rising, the Lego Ninjago show and featuring the shows characters. The drawings add done with various supplies, like pens, color pencils and markers.

Image one) Two sequential drawings of Wyldfyre and Kai talking together. Wyldfyre says "You better be going ok a super boring mission." Where the word "bring" is underlined for emphasis. Kai replies with an amused chuckle, "The boringest."

Image two) Nya is running to Jay, who only has his bead turned towards her, and his body turned away. Nya is crying happy tears and exclaims "JAY! I found you!" Jay looks uninterested. The pair are stood where darkness surrounds them.

Image three) A closeup of Nya done in blue marker. She is saying "I know the real Jay could never forget me."

Image four) Wyldfyre is tearing up, stuttering out, "D-did Kai just leap to his..."

Image five) Geo looking at a photo lovingly. Some hearts float around his head.

Image six) Zane, very anxiously, holds up a plus frog, and says "It is a long and barely comprehensible story..." Sweat beads down his face.

Image seven) Jay holds up some cuffs and awkwardly asks with a shrug, "I'm supposes to capture you. So can you just let me do that?"

/End ID]

[evielutionevie]

A “Marth wearing an Omnitrix” doodle request that I finished up because I like how the sketch turned out a lot (I dislike how it turned out a bit but shhh it’s fiiiiiiine)

[ben-the-hyena]

THE RETURN

My current contract is soon gonna end and I'm gonna be jobless soon again, furthermore I have many new projects (not professional but personal, sentimental ones) that need a reaching goal, I don't know how much, and I need to motivate myself into drawing again so it is time to open commissions again isn't it ? New commission sheet, updated to be more visible with other examples and a few more options than before ! NO SLOTS this time, for now I'm keeping these open indefinitely unless something serious or busy happens ! And remember, pay me on Ko-Fi, and if you paid me the most out of anyone during the trimester, I'll reward you with a free drawing of your choice in the end of it !

My Ko-Fi : https://ko-fi.com/benthewackyhyena

Things to know :

-Keep in mind that I might add filters or, for traditional, digitally edit mistakes

-When I talk about stylization I mean it can like go from silhouettes to semirealism/realism (but if so I will only sketch, more comfortable with it) by way of chibi, stylized figures etc And for techniques, well it can depend but keep in mind I'm NOT a super big expert so I may be limited hence why it's better to discuss first

-I don’t do just characters but also objects and scenery. Tho I don’t truly know what to price it yet so if you are interested we should talk first too

-I do NSFW too yes but NO weird fetishes please, also I will NOT do dubcon or noncon, as well as no zoophilia, necrophilia or pedophilia (which is also for SFW shipping pics)

-I will privilege OCs and original work in general over fanart if getting short in time

-Knowing that I am also looking for a job as well as trying to work on my personal and/or professional stuff I might take time so please be patient

-Pay first, so that I wouldn’t have drawn for nothing if you are a scammer who won’t pay. In case you did pay but I can’t finish (work, health etc) I will give you back your money

-Sure if you did not imagine things to look exactly that way I can tweak and fix a little but I emphasize on a little. I once knew a guy who had me redo a pic 15 times without a please or a thank you because he gave bad instructions when I was doing point commissions and I lost a day of my life so PLEASE don’t do that

-For the same reason, I am allowed to refuse a commission even if the reasons do not fit my rules if I am overwhelmed or don’t have the time or I find you rude or it makes me uncomfortable for reasons I can’t a put a name on or think of right now

-In general, know that drawing takes time and effort and that it is a job like any other so please let us treat each other with respect and politeness

[writingquestionsanswered]

Would it be a major turn off if a character, in a world where almost everyone has magic, only had a few chances before they have to cause like actual bodily harm in order to continue using it?

Some additional context I have to justify it are that 1. It's almost OP and I need some things to balance it out. Like, it's literally immortality that's kinda like save points, just done so it isn't completely videogame style (since that world isn't a video game) 2. Most people's powers do have side effects. However, to be fair, they're supposed to make sense (e.g. former protagonist has fire powers, so she's also heat resistant but is naturally very hot, so cold hurts more before it heats up and she can't touch things that need cold because she can't just switch off the heat, or one that's probably more cliche but they've got super strength and don't know how much force they're actually applying, gentle to them still is pretty rough a lot of the time, etc), and I'm not sure if having to actually injure yourself is a good side effect to near-immortality 3. She also has a sort of healing ability doubled with it, where no matter how awful the injury it heals in 24 hours (like from light paper cut to the loss of a limb, it is always 24 hours, it just made more sense to me that way), so as long as she stops the bleeding she'll be fine the next day But then I feel like it's a bit too much since 1. She would lose any motive to use it - she doesn't worry about death, so with the injury and pain it'd likely just be like adding 0+-1 when you're trying to get 2 (if that makes sense), 2. She's in single-digits still, so it'd be a child harming themself because they don't want to die, which while the tone is definitely supposed to get dark at some point I feel like that might just be a bit much both to read and to write, and 3. There's already another balance in place - if she dies, she'll appear back at the last "save" (considering it's inspired by video games that's the quickest way to describe it), and will lose any memory or development that happened in-between. It also only lasts ~a month so that she won't be completely immortal, she has to keep redoing it if she wants to be. So she'd physically and mentally revert back to up to a month ago, in the exact place she was no matter what happened there in-between, no matter where she's been or what she's learned in-between. Still debating whether or not there should be a way to regain the memories or not.

I'm also not sure if I actually want to give her another reason to hesitate to use it, or if it's just because I like letting characters suffer in my head, but the story isn't going to just be in my head so I want it to be actually fun instead of just agony lol. I don't want my story to be too affected by my sadism exclusively reserved for fictional characters.

Sorry it's long and probably awkward, and that it probably has way too much info when I just needed a little bit, I just want to write my story (and current protagonist) decently and not be TOO harsh on the characters. While the way I wrote probably made it kinda clear which way I'm thinking of going, I just wanted an outsider opinion that I trust before choosing one way or the other. Sorry if it's too uncomfortable or morbid or anything, idk where else to ask and I'm embarrassed to ask people I know irl (personal issues 💀)

Thank you for reading this whole ask, sorry again about how long it is!

Bodily Harm as Consequence of Magic Use

I feel like "bodily harm" is really broad and random consequence of using magic. So... after a few uses, if the character uses magic again, their arm or leg just randomly breaks? Or a huge gash opens up on their back? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Typically, the consequences of magic are more logical:

-- Physical fatigue (lots of energy coursing through your body) -- Mental fatigue (extreme focus, quick thinking, mental stress) -- Loss of source (source of magic is limited so lost once used up) -- Harm to other (someone/something related is harmed by use)

You would typically choose one of these consequences (though physical and mental fatigue often go hand-in-hand), then the extent of the consequence is greater with the power/amount of magic used. In other words, a smaller spell has a smaller consequence. A bigger spell has a bigger consequence. A small spell would cause a little bit of physical exhaustion. A big spell would cause the person to pass out for a little while.

If you can find some way for the injuries to make sense, then you could still do that. But I would also add the consequence that injuries incurred via magic use don't heal in 24 hours. And while injured, no magic can be used. That way there's an actual cost to using magic too often. It's not just a superficial cost like an injury. They're putting themselves in the position of being powerless until the injury heals naturally.

I hope that helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

Learn more about WQA

Visit my Master List of Top Posts

Go to ko-fi.com/wqa to buy me coffee or see my commissions

[awsydawnarts]

Update: holy shit I actually had the time and motivation to draw today, it was difficult bcs I don’t really do it that much anymore but at least it got done lol

This au is really gettin me all creative n shit lol, this is more stuff for my magic school bus university au. I really love D.A. in this au, she wasn’t my favorite as a kid (I was a Phoebe fan) but I think she is now lol. She spends the majority of her freshman year biting off more than she can chew and desperately trying to not lose her shit (spoilers she’s not super successful). I’ve been thinking about it and I kind of want her to be going for a degree in aerospace engineering, which might not be a good idea since I know nothing about that myself but I feel like it makes sense for her. Obviously she’s a huge perfectionist and overachiever when it comes to her grades, but I can also see that seeping into other aspects of her life as she struggles to stay in control. If her makeup and outfits are always perfect, there’s no way someone will see through the facade and realize what a stressed-out disaster she is, right???

(Wrong)

I would describe her style as “pastel academia.” I want to kind of keep the kids in the color palettes that they had in the original show (I might actually color this one day, pretend her skirt is teal and purple lol), and the stuff I’ve done so far has posed a really fun challenge in incorporating those colors while not making them look stupid. D.A.’s the only one of the girls who I see as a skirt person, although that might just be my personal dislike of wearing skirts. I wanted to have her hairstyle echo the original but be it’s own thing, so she’s got the braids now (a good hairstyle to sleep in and not have to waste precious time redoing!) and of course she still has bangs. I’m hoping that at some point I’ll make this digital which will allow me to color it and also make a couple different outfit variations, but I guess we’ll see how it pans out. Hopefully I’ll have the inspiration to do more for this au bcs I really love it, but who knows.

[breynoldsstoianovarts245-03]

First Blog

When we began this project I was unsure about how to get started. So far, the class demos have clarified the process, which has given me direction. Choosing a famous icon and replicating the image on a photocopier proved to be easiest even though it was the part that I dreaded the most. Now that I am cutting out the figure from the ground for the fourth square, I have gotten to the frustrating part. Trimming a straight 4''x4'' square is not that intimidating. However, cutting out individual pieces within the figure gets painstakingly tiresome even when excluding the tiny highlights and shadows. Surprisingly enough, I messed up by taping the figure's foreground onto the backing square and not on the cutting. When I peeled off the artists tape, the surface of the lighter card stock came up with it. Luckily this tear was not a complete mishap since I was able to glue that part back to the surface. I will redo this square though as the product still looks ugly.

I do not see how typography relates to our current project. Why does the reading describe typography as important to delivering a message, but not acknowledge that a message does not need words to carry meaning across? The conceptual part of this project shows how imagery can explain the significance of the icon just as well as words can. The bland information from this section of the book may be more useful for a a later project. In addition to being dull, the content seemed generic even when the author broke down the different typefaces and their history. Some people might be fascinated with how typography has evolved from calligraphy. I am less interested in that aspect and more intrigued in the different motives that inspired the early and later typographers to develop their unique type. It is funny to think of the early typographers as playing into a cat and mouse game while the developers of the later typefaces as rebels whose dissatisfaction with digital era typefaces motivated them to create their own.

[audiovisualrecall]

Huh. what if I did the colors for the illustrations for steph's book in gouache? Like. Print out the art as high quality as I can, do colors with gouache, then scan into computer again as high resolution as I can? Hmm. Probably more effort than it'd be worth, and if the resolution didn't look good enough I'd have to redo stuff digitally and it would take even longer and I might lose motivation. If I knew for 100% certain that it would look good and would scan well and be high res and good quality for future printing, maybe. I could maybe try looking for a 'gouache' brush on clip studio I guess and try to work digitally the way i woulf with real paint....

[goldiipond]

Im drawing so much au stuff tonight,,, I feel powerful

[inprogresspokemon]

FAQ

About Me

Hey there, you can call me IPP (In-Progress Pokemon) or Jae. Any pronoun (he/she/they) is fine. I started this blog in late October 2014 and it has become a passion project for me, that will possibly never end because TPC keeps adding new Pokemon.

My first Pokemon game was Red Version and my favorite Pokemon are Swampert and Noivern. Out of the Gen 9 Starters I am currently team Fuecoco.

I have a pet Blue Tongue Skink named Burrito (he is a good, chubby boy).

What does In-Progress Pokemon mean?/What are these?

In-Progress Pokemon is my name for the concept of exploring how Pokemon might look if they physically transitioned from one evolutionary stage to another. Basically: if Pokemon grew rather than evolved. The “transitional stages” that I illustrate aren’t meant to be taken as actual additional stages; rather, as a “snap-shot” in time while the Pokemon is growing or transitioning between each evolutionary stage. The flavor text/descriptions help to bridge the evolutionary gaps as well.

I also post other Pokemon-related art, like commissioned Fakemon or my Dual-Type Eeveelutions.

When do you update/post new art?

My upload schedule for new art is every Monday and Thursday, 2:00pm EST. They’re reblogged in the evening at 8:00pm EST, and again on Sunday.

I try to always have something new to post for those days, but occasionally have to skip updates when I didn’t have enough time to finish something. I reblog older art at 2pm and 4pm on other days - they’re tagged as “old art” and “IPPreblog” if you want to blacklist them.

New art only view is here.

If they’re not meant to be new stages, why are they named? Can I suggest a name?

Originally I didn’t name them, but after time people began to suggest names, and it’s turned into something I do regularly now. When I post a new Pokemon line, people suggest names for the transitional stages and after a while I’ll look through the suggested names and pick the one I think fit best (based on origin, existing name scheme, etc) - I don’t come up with the names myself.

You’re welcome to suggest a name by reblogging, commenting, or messaging me. When the time comes I’ll make a post with all the suggestions, and I’ll tag you if I go with your name or a name you’ve seconded or showed support for.

If you decide to suggest a name, please include a brief breakdown of your suggestion inspirations (ie: Charmander is a combination of char + salamander).

Have you done [X] Pokemon?

At this point... probably! If you’re on mobile, you can try the search function or look up any Pokemon using my mobile index.

If you’re on desktop, I recommend my sprited Pokemon Index.

Both are kept up-to-date.

How’s your progress going?

They keep introducing new Pokemon, but I’m getting pretty close. As of Early 2022, only a few Pokemon lines are left pre-PLA, and now I have some new Hisuian Pokemon added to the plate that I’m quickly getting to.

What’s up with the redos?

When I started in 2014 I had little to no digital art experience, and a lot of my older art shows this. I’m in the process of redoing older lines and either updating their existing design in my current style, or redoing the design and concept completely. I dislike having my older (imo bad) art out there, so redos is a priority for me, although I know it’s not as interesting for my followers so I try to space them out. I also tend to do redos when I don’t have the time or motivation for anything else. 

I post redo compilations periodically if you want to see a comparison.

Are you okay with fanart?

I absolutely love fanart, it makes my day and fills me with joy. Please tag me if you post it so I can see and reblog your art!!

Can I use your Fakemon...

...as my profile picture? Yes - please just credit me if anyone asks about it.

...in my fanfiction? Yes - please credit me somewhere in the notes (etc.) if your fanfiction is posted publicly. Bonus points if you link to the original post for the fakemon you’re using.

...to make an OC? Yes - please credit me for the base design/species when your OC is first posted, but you don’t need to keep including credit every time going forward. And if anyone asks, please credit me.

...in my Youtube video? As a general rule, I’m fine with that so long as I’m credited and linked to in the description, but I prefer if you ask me first if you plan on my work being a large part of your video. Using a single image here or there is fine as long as I’m credited.

...in my fangame? Sorry, but I’m not allowing my fakemon in fangames or rom hacks at this time.

All that said, I can’t grant permission for Fakemon that were commissioned and belong to the commissioner, although I’m always willing to try reaching out to the commissioner and ask permission on your behalf. It will always say on my posts if a Fakemon was commissioned and belongs to someone else.

What about Mega Pokemon?

Yes, I’m doing those too.

What about Gigantamax Pokemon?

As of now, I’m not planning on doing them. They’re large, time-consuming, and I don’t really like them. I may do them in the future once I’ve completed the main lines and Megas, but no promises.

Commissions?

Yes, I take commissions, though I close them when I have too many commissioned queued or if my IRL is very busy. The pinned post on the top of my blog shows my commission status.

I’m in the process of revamping my commission info page to have images and be more up-to-date, but my old page is here.

I mainly do Pokemon-related commissions, but I do take others, I just don’t post them here. If you’re looking for a non-Pokemon related commission, just ask!

I accept payment only once I’m able to start to your commission and do my business through PayPal invoices, which you can pay with a PayPal account if you have one, or a credit or debit card if you do not.

Depending on what you’re looking to commission, we can work as collaboratively as you like. Some people just want me to make a certain thing and like being surprised with the final result, some people have a firm vision and want to be able to give feedback during the designing process and make changes, some people fall somewhere in the middle. Whatever you prefer is fine.

Social Media:

Email IPPcommissions@gmail.com (commissions)

           inprogresspokemon@gmail.com (other)

Instagram @inprogresspokemon

Facebook In-Progress Pokemon

DeviantArt InProgressPokemon

Twitter @Inprogresspokes

I am only active on Tumblr these days, but I plan to return to DeviantArt and Instagram sometime soon.

Can I submit/ask/chat with you about something? 

Yes, here is my submissions page, and here is my asks page.

And you can always send me a chat message, though I get a lot of them and can’t always respond right away.

Did you get my message? Why haven’t you responded yet?

Sorry, sometimes it takes me a while to get to messages. I also try to space them out so I’m not filling the blog with them. It’s never personal. If I never responded to your message, or it’s been weeks, it’s possible I never got it, or more likely, it has gotten buried under other asks before I was able to respond. If you need to hear from me about something, you can send me a chat message or resend your ask.

I don’t want to clutter people’s dashboards, so I tend to not respond to a lot of anonymous asks if I feel they don’t require a response, but I read them and I especially appreciate the kind words that some of you send my way; they help to keep my spirits up! If you want to send me and ask and prefer a private response, feel free to put (private) at the end of your non-anon message and I will respond privately.

What program do you use?:

I use Paint Tool SAI for the sketch, line art, and coloring, and Photoshop CC for the text/editing/backgrounds.

My general settings info is here.

Tagging, ie: I don’t want to see [X] or I want to find [X]:

I tag everything. You can search for Pokemon by name, type, generation, region, as well as for starter Pokemon and Eeveelutions. You can also blacklist certain things you aren’t interested in seeing on your dashboard.

Other tags:

IPPasks - my ask tag

IPPnews/IPPupdates - news and updates for the blog

IPPnames/name suggestions - for reblogs where a Pokemon is named

IPPreblog/reblog/old art - for reblogs of old art, for any reason

IPPdiscussions - longer discussions or explorations of a topic

IPPdoodles - for random Pokemon sketches and doodles

IPPfanart - my fanart tag!

dual types - posts about the Dual-Type Eeveelutions

baby version - Pokemon lines that have a bonus baby form

[X] bothers me, can you tag it?

Yes - if seeing or reading something bothers you, please let me know and I will do my best to tag it for you going forward.

[onlyswan]

cloudburst | jjk

→  pairing: jungkook x oc

→  genre: fluff, angst

→  warnings: mention of depression, profanities bc i curse a lot

→  word count: 1.2k

summary: cloudburst (n.) an extreme amount of precipitation in a short period of time, sometimes accompanied by hail and thunder, which is capable of creating flood conditions;

or the only word close enough to describe the peculiar episodes of rainstorm that befall the vicinity when jungkook and ivy’s skin touch.

note: so um i came up with this idea for like more than a year now lol it’s supposedly a story but my motivation always ends up short so i gave it a try today and ended up using jk and i badly need to post it somewhere so here you go i guess lmk what you think?

___

“the weather app said it would be sunny today. why the fuck is it raining cats and dogs?” the woman who just entered the café grumbled, her hair dripping across the floor with every stride she took on the way to a table.

 her friend it seems like laughed at her appearance, “i warned you that it rains here a lot yet you still moved. invest in all things waterproof,”

 ivy looked over at jungkook with a guilty look on her face, which he deliberately ignored. he continued sipping on his coffee, one hand scrolling through his laptop and the other with no plans on letting go of hers. they’ve been here before. they’ve fought countless of times because she can’t stop worrying about how their relationship affects other people, and well, the entire planet.

 “jungkook, humans need sun. the plants and trees that give us oxygen need the fucking sun. it can’t rain every day! we will die!”

 “but i need you every day. is that not an enough reason?”

 and how could she possibly forget this one…

 “the local government is panicking about the flood. it makes no absolute sense why it would rain this hard suddenly often. i think they’re executing a project to redo the roads,”

 “good. that’s their damn job,”

 the thing is… jungkook knows what he wants and he will not let anything stand in his way of getting it. this fact has been well established ever since he was a little kid. when his parents wouldn’t let him get the toy he was eyeing the moment they stepped into the mall, he made his own means and got it for himself, selling the drawings he worked all night on to his classmates and mooching off them for food during recess instead of spending his allowance on overpriced food at the cafeteria. they don’t support his career choice? that’s fine. he moved out and tried, is still trying, his very best to survive in the world outside their roof. to say his parents are still baffled by this action is an understatement. he might be stubborn, and well, bratty, but he never begs. he never asks twice. it is that simple. wait. correction. was.

 jungkook is a hopeless romantic. he isn’t shy about it, but he isn’t very proud of it either. he likes classic romance movies and that’s how he imagines true love would be like. he loves the yearning, stolen glances, shy compliments, petty jealousy. but oh my fucking god, not like this. he is whipped. there is no denying. the fondness he has even for the most trivial things about ivy fascinates him. why do the smallest interactions put a stupid smile on my face? why does her voice gives me butterflies? why the fuck can’t i get enough of her? his friends are terrified of commitment. if they could only hear his thoughts, they would laugh at his face. one day they will understand and i will laugh at their faces then, he would always think to himself when they discuss about not wanting to get tied down and bossed around. because he would do anything and everything for ivy. that is why he pissed off all the damn time. sure, he enjoys the longing and slow burn. but not when one small touch and it rains so hard it looks like the sky is going to fucking fall upon the earth, not when ivy is sad and he can’t hold her in his arms without making her feel more down. rain makes her gloomy and depressed, that is one of the first things he learned about her. the irony makes him want to laugh and cry. she always assures him that it’s alright, that she has found comfort in it somehow, because she has him by her side. and she means it wholeheartedly. jungkook finds it hard to believe her, but he smiles and kisses her anyway, the ringing of the raindrops against the roof turning mute. her kisses make everything better.

 her love language is physical touch, so when they both came to a realization as to why it rains every time they are together, she felt cursed. why? out of all people, why her? she had boyfriends before, but the connection she has with jungkook is different. he treats her right. she is generally shy but once she talks, she would go on and on. she rambles when she is happy, excited, frustrated, or angry. they all get tired of this eventually, but not jungkook. he finds it adorable, and he listens intently whether it’s about how fucked up her childhood was or how much she wants a black cat. he makes her feel happy and loved. but it seems like the universe is against her happiness. when things don’t go her way, she shuts everyone out and drowns herself in her own misery. she knows she’s pathetic, but at least she’s not letting this patheticness bother anyone else, right?

 jungkook never begs. he does not ask twice. but for ivy, he would get on his knees. just like when he spent the entire night knocking on her door.

 “just leave, jungkook. this is fucking stupid. we are stupid,” she made sure to speak clearly, to not wobble on her words. her voice betrayed her at the end. “we’re over,” it came out as a whisper and she was almost terrified that he heard it. he did.

 “let me in, please. let’s talk properly. how are you just going to decide that we’re done? there are two of us in this relationship, ivy,” he tried to reason with her, pulling at his sleeves in an attempt to warm his freezing hands. he wants nothing but to cuddle in her soft and warm bed, he’s in pain. he hates this entire situation, but he loves her most in the world.

 “you sound ridiculous. we haven’t been together that long. you will move on, and i will, too,” the truth is she feels ridiculous. yes, they haven’t been together for that long but she has grown attached. and this hurts worse than she expected. “…right?”

 “that’s bullshit and you know it. i don’t care about the consequences. i don’t want to lose you,” it has never been this difficult to walk away, so you know what? fuck ego. fuck the goddamn planet. “we will make this work. we have to. so when you’re ready to open the door, i will be here.”

 ivy smiled at the sight of her boyfriend focused on drawing on his tablet, legs crossed and the digital pencil gripped by his tattooed hand she usually loves holding, but she’ll let him work for now. he tsked when a strand of hair fell over his eyes, which she brushed back immediately.

 “just put your hair in a bun so it wouldn’t bother you,”

 he pouted, “you do it better than me,”

 “liar, you just don’t want to move,” she rolled her eyes but stood up anyway.

 “maybeee,” he chuckled, averting his attention back to the screen as she did his hair. she loves his hair, more so with that damn undercut, but she won’t tell him that and well, she doesn’t really have to, because he already knows. with the way she constantly plays with it and tells him to put it up? she’s not exactly slick.

 “thanks, baby. i love you,” he hummed. she kissed his cheek as a return of appreciation and fought back a wince when the lady from the other table continued complaining because the drizzle outside intensified to a rain once again.

 jungkook merely shrugged and turned the screen towards her. “what do you think?”

[polaristranslations]

Shinobu Mustard Episode 1

001

This spring, Harimaze Kie was a first year that had just enrolled in Naoetsu Private High School and a part of the girls' basketball club, and naturally, she was extremely regretting both of those decisions. She was regretting having enrolled in the university-focused Naoetsu High that had a high standard score, and she was regretting having joined the girls' basketball club that was too Spartan for a school that was supposed to be university-focused.

After all, the Naoetsu High girls' basketball club had previously had a super high-school level superstar, and the team had actually competed on a national level. But, as mentioned above, that senior had already retired, and what remained for the next generation to inherit was simply an intense training regimen.

A sports club with intense training, even though they weren't good.

That was the worst.

It was an ancient style of training that was influenced by images of a golden age—a bloated self-projection of, "we're both human beings, so I should be able to reach her level".

In the first place, this superstar senior had ultimately sustained an injury to her left arm and opted for an early retirement, so a Spartan training regimen was really meaningless, or rather, it could even prove to be backfiring on the team... So why was the club still forcing its members to do bunny hops?

Having said that, she wasn't exactly willing to quit the club of her own accord. If the coach or the captain were to give her the cruel verdict of, "You have no talent so you should just quit," then she'd happily resign with that as the reason. But unfortunately—and perhaps this was also a remnant of the era in which a superstar was a member—the Spartan girls' basketball club had a strong sense of solidarity.

And a strong sense of solidarity meant a heavy sense of collective responsibility.

If quitting of her own accord could end up influencing her teammates in some way, then it was hard to even bring up the subject... If she even said a word of "wanting to quit", then it would stop being just her problem alone.

Even though it was a tradition that couldn't be right, she didn't want to be the cause of putting it to an end... She wanted the evil tradition to come to its natural end, praying that it wasn't made out to be her fault. Stemming from the collective responsibility was a desire to shift the responsibility onto someone else. And probably, the other teammates were also continuing to endure the hard training with similar motives, their hands tied by similar ropes, all being foolish together.

And with that, it was today as well that Harimaze Kie had unwillingly participated in club activities right up until she was allowed to leave, dragging her two legs that ached with unending muscular pain down the dark evening path as she'd done for the past few months.

Her teammates all left in different directions, and obviously the time she left from school didn't coincide with her friends from class (in fact, her club activities had been so intense that she'd fallen out of contact with her friends from class), so she was returning home alone in a way that couldn't possibly be considered safe. She was even wondering if some bad guy wouldn't just come up and attack her already.

Even though she'd be able to triumphantly quit the club if she were to get badly hurt.

Even as she realized her thoughts had gone in too serious a direction, she could no longer control her thoughts anymore... She had become utterly exhausted from taking over the awful legacy that had meaninglessly remained, even as she knew it was backfiring.

Even her grades continued to decline.

It was true that practice was stopped before exams, but she'd found it hard to escape from the unspoken pressure of "training on your own" and "training in secret", and so her first midterm exams had resulted in awful scores that would been unthinkable for her in middle school. And at this rate, her rank for the final exams was sure to fall in the triple digits.

Well, not all of it could be blamed on club activities.

The students that had gathered at this private, university-focused school had simply had grades so excellent it made her embarrassed for having evaluated herself as a prodigy just a few months before... She'd gotten depressed, thinking things like, "Won't I end up becoming the first dropout since Naoetsu High was founded?"

Ah, that's why I want to be attacked.

Someone attack me. Beat me up.

Turn my life into chaos.

It could become an excuse for me to quit the club, and I might even get exempted from final exams... Then I can study while in the hospital and catch up on what I've fallen behind on. That's right, even if I wasn't a prodigy, I should be diligent enough to do that.

I can still redo everything.

Was this way of thinking just escapism?

(Escapism... Did that mean escaping from reality? Or did it mean managing to escape to reality?)

To throw away her hopes and dreams, and focus on reality.

In a sense, that was also a form of escapism... But in any case, there was no bad guy that conveniently appeared to strike her head in on Harimaze Kie's way home. No matter how many times, how many days she prayed.

Ah, then it's fine even if it isn't some bad guy.

It's fine if I get run over by a car at some corner, and it's fine if an airplane crashed onto my exact location... If it can make it easier for me, then anything's fine.

Even if it isn't reality... Even if it's a fantasy.

Like.

Yes, even something like a monstrous apparition—

"This is something I think every time I come to this country, but... There isn't a phrase that makes me less thankful than 'Thanks for the meal'... And saying 'It was delicious' is practically the opposite of delicious."

As she came near a three-way intersection, and as she walked—no, as she painfully dragged her legs while looking at her smartphone to make it even easier for a bad guy to attack her from behind, Harimaze Kie was, very openly, approached from the front.

And, as if a self-introduction was a form of etiquette that could never be forgotten—

"I'm the great Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster. The death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire."

Her hope had been granted. Or perhaps, her despair had been granted.

Thinking that, Harimaze Kie raised her head.

002

It had been a while since I'd been to a hospital.

However, it wasn't that I, Araragi Koyomi, was particularly afraid of syringes, nor did I have a fear of lab coats—in fact, I actually loved them. This is just between you and me, but there'd been one time that I'd made my girlfriend wear a lab coat... We'd roleplayed using a mechanical pencil as a syringe.

Regardless (as much as it made me fall into some frustrations), the reason I'd stayed away from hospitals regardless of anything was that, during spring break when I was still a 17-year-old high schooler, I'd had my blood sucked by the gold-haired and gold-eyed, iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire, beautiful enough to send chills down my spine, and spent about 2 weeks as a vampire. And, because of the aftereffects, I had become completely free of injuries and diseases.

I was in such good health that I was almost tired of it.

Or rather, if I found myself getting examined at a hospital, then my aberrant regeneration abilities or superior eyesight could come to light, and I could end up being used as a sample for human experimentation... As a result, I'd even come up with an excuse to skip out on the physical examinations that occurred when entering college.

For the sake of my rose-colored campus life, there was no end to the caution I'd need to take... Regardless, the reason I came to the Naoetsu General Hospital this time was because I'd been personally called there by an adult that I owed more to than even my own parents.

By Gaen Izuko-san.

"So, what do you think, Koyomin? About this patient," said Gaen-san.

In a room on the fifth floor of the fourth ward, she spoke almost as if a doctor would—as if she were asking for my opinion. But I was in the science department and not the medical department, and if we were saying that, then not even Gaen-san was a doctor, either. Although, if it was her, it wouldn't be surprising if she had multiple doctor's licenses... Of course, while I had no intention of pretending to be a doctor at this point, after being prompted, I decided to give the bedridden "patient" a look.

Actually, because the single room wasn't all that big, that "patient" had already been in my field of vision since I'd entered, but it was just hard for me to look directly—I'd averted my eyes on reflex.

It felt like I'd seen something I wasn't supposed to.

The "patient" that was lying on the bed was,

"...A mummy."

While it had been made to wear a patient gown for hospital use, at the very least, it did not seem like a living being—or so it seemed.

"This is a mummy, isn't it? A human one, at that."

When I was a high schooler, there'd been a time that I witnessed something like a mummified monkey, but from the physique, and from the hair that was still left on the head, even if they'd gotten completely dried up, I could tell for certain that this mummy was a human.

Even if they weren't a living human.

They were certainly a dead human.

"No, no, this isn't even a dead human, Koyomin."

"...Um, Gaen-san. Isn't it about time for you to stop calling me 'Koyomin'? I'm already a college student now."

"A college freshman is practically the same as a newborn baby, you know. It was the same for me. I would say, goo goo ga ga."

She was totally unapproachable.

Well, it was a waste of breath. Considering this woman of unknown age, even once I became a fully-fledged adult, she would probably still affectionately call me "Koyomin"... But anyway, what did she mean by, "this isn't even a dead human"?

"It's alive. Still. Even in this state."

Gaen-san spoke without a moment's hesitation—it was a composed, not overly dramatic way of speaking very much like a specialist, or rather, very much like the administrator of specialists.

However, as someone who wasn't even close to being a specialist, it was a line I couldn't overlook.

This mummy was still alive? Really?

I would've guessed this was some kind of sokushinbutsu, some kind of mummified monk, that had been brought from some temple... Although, thinking about it, it would be in bad taste even for Gaen-san to lay someone like that to rest in the bed of a hospital.

"Its heart is still beating, and it's still breathing. Its bodily functions are almost disturbingly normal. Though there's certainly no consciousness, it's not dead yet... If you think it's a lie, you can check for yourself."

"Check for myself..."

Being told that, I nervously reached out a hand to feel the sleeping mummy's heartbeat—but just before I touched it, I was rebuked with a, "Hold on, Koyomin".

"That's a girl, you know. Touching her chest is off-limits. You could at least take the lady's arm to get a pulse like a gentleman."

A girl? Considering it had gotten all dried up, it was impossible to tell the gender of the mummy���however, regardless of whether or not she was a lady, I couldn't ignore the fact that she was a girl.

"...Then, if you'll excuse me."

I touched the left wrist of the mummy. Since she was a mummy, I was worried that she'd crumble into bits if I touched her, so I'd tried to be as gentle as possible, but that dried-up skin was still surprisingly resilient.

And I certainly felt a pulse. Thump, thump, thump.

"I'll just say this right now, but there's not actually any blood flowing—though her heart is still beating, there's no blood circulating."

It's just air circulating—said Gaen-san.

"Just air in a hollow body. Like it's completely empty."

"......"

As I listened to Gaen-san speak, unsure whether the line was supposed to be a joke or a fact, I pushed aside the mummy's hair to carefully check the girl's neck—and, as expected.

Two small holes had been pierced into her neck.

As if she'd been bitten by a snake.

Or, as if she'd been taken in by an oni.

"......"

"Harimaze Kie is the name of that mummy. A female student of the school you used to go to, Naoetsu High... But since she's a freshman that started this year, I don't think she's an acquaintance of yours."

"...Was she attacked by a vampire?"

Though I'd internally gotten flustered at the name of my alma mater suddenly showing up, I confirmed with Gaen-san something that didn't need to be said. It was so obvious that it definitely could've been left unsaid, but even so, I couldn't go without asking.

I gradually began to understand why I'd been called here.

"It seems so. On the way back from club activities, it seems she ran into one with a bang."

"Even though it'd been peaceful."

That was all I could say.

I had no intention of pretending that I understood anything.

However, everything started when I was attacked by a vampire during that spring break—the turmoil that ensued should have been brought to an end with my graduation ceremony, but to think that, just a few months later, a case like this would occur.

Well, it was possible that incidents like this occurred frequently across the world that I just didn't know about—if not for that, then Gaen-san, "the onee-san that knew everything", would be out of a job.

It was a terrible business opportunity.

It was a very niche livelihood—or rather, a niche death-lihood.

"So you're saying, this girl... Harimaze-chan? Did Harimaze-chan turn into a vampire?"

"Well, it seems that she failed to turn into a vampire."

Gaen-san shrugged.

"This is a fairly common occurrence. Successes like your case, Koyomin, are actually rarer. Although, with what happened, from the side of the vampire that sucked your blood, it was a huge failure for her."

Saying that, Gaen-san lowered her eyes to the linoleum that was characteristic of hospitals... That is, to my shadow on the floor.

Of course, there was no response from my shadow.

We were in broad daylight.

"Even though she's still alive, she's just barely not dead... Just a mummy with all its blood sucked out. Not on the verge of death, but still more dead than alive. Is that it..."

Even I could've become like this at that time... However, while a part of me was trembling, another part of me was relieved.

I had no intention of saying that it was fortunate that Harimaze-chan had her blood sucked by a vampire and turned into a mummy where it wasn't clear whether she was alive or not—but, as long as she was still alive, there was still hope.

And because of that, just like there had been for me, there must be a way to turn her back into a human—so the fact that her vampire transformation had failed was a blessing in disguise.

In my case, I had no choice but to do something about it by myself through my own efforts and self-education, but in this case, the omniscient specialist Gaen-san was presiding over it... I wasn't exactly optimistic, but there had to be a way to help this girl out.

"'Help her', huh? Didn't my very own Hawaiian-shirt guy say something about that?"

"...I've already completely forgotten what your Hawaiian-shirt guy has said, but Gaen-san, it's not something you say, isn't it? You don't say anything like, 'You can't help her. People can only help themselves.'"

"It seems like you remember it, though."

Gaen-san gave a sarcastic laugh.

"Of course, I'm here to help this girl, Harimaze-chan. However, Koyomin. If you simply think that a homebody like me being out here from the beginning is 'dependable', then that would be troublesome for me," she said.

What did she say?

"Huh? What does that mean? If you're saying you can't be depended on, Gaen-san, then who else is there that we can depend on?"

"That's a very nice thing to say, but before I explain, let's change locations."

"Change locations? To where?"

"We'll be making our rounds. Since it doesn't seem like you hate playing doctor, Koyomin, let me introduce you to the next patient."

003

It was a mystery how Gaen-san, who was neither a doctor nor a staff member of this hospital, was able to walk around as if she owned the place, but after seeing that a similar-looking mummy had been laid down in the bed of the next room over, I decided to come to the conclusion that the director of this hospital was the one who made the request to this specialist.

With these patients who had had all the fluids sucked out of their bodies and yet for some reason were still alive, if two were brought in in quick succession, it wasn't exactly something that modern medicine could do anything about... It had to be the work of the occult.

"This girl is called Honnou Aburi-chan. Another student of Naoetsu High—however, she's a second-year, so it's possible for even Koyomin to know her."

Unfortunately.

During my high school days, I wasn't exactly the sort that interacted much with my juniors.

Or rather, I hadn't even gotten accustomed to school enough to remember the names of students in other years... If she was currently a second-year, that meant that when I was a third-year, she was a first-year.

It was possible that I'd at least seen her face before, but because she was a mummy, and because she'd been made to wear a patient gown, I had no way of identifying her by her appearance... If I had to be completely honest, I couldn't even distinguish her from the mummy in the previous room.

"Harimaze-chan's mummy, that had been lying on the road, was discovered by a passerby the day before yesterday. Honnou-chan, who'd been found as a mummy at home in her own futon, was discovered last night by her mother."

"One person a day? That's quite a fast pace."

"It's not necessarily one person a day. There could be more that just simply haven't been discovered yet. Right now, it may just seem like only female students from Naoetsu High are being targeted, but there's a possibility this is only two out of a hundred victims."

Two out of a hundred. And that wasn't totally an exaggeration.

As for the vampire I personally knew, she boasted that she could stay alive even if she only drank the blood of a single person every few months, but on the other hand, she still had an appetite where she could suck the blood of all of humanity if she lost self-control.

However, in this case, I suppose I had to consider things based on Gaen-san's conjectures... There was some unidentified vampire targeting female students of Naoetsu High.

Unidentified... No.

The vampire I personally knew.

"Um, Gaen-san. Could it be possible that you're suspecting Shinobu? It's true that she'd been the subject of a rumor among the female students of Naoetsu High once before—"

"No, no, I've never once thought that to be the case. I only just realized when you asked me. It's not for that reason that I called you out, Koyomin, when you're enjoying your college life. I was just hoping to cooperate with you, as you know the lay of the land. So that we can prevent a 3rd victim, or perhaps a 101st victim."

Of course, you aren't a stranger to helping out a girl that you have absolutely no relation to—said Gaen-san, as if she were making fun of my personal history. Although I had nothing to say in response... It was because I got so desperate to help those I saw within range or within reach that I would end up troubling those who weren't within range and weren't within reach.

But, what should I do now?

After suddenly being shown not one, but two mummies in quick succession, and hearing that they were mummies of high school girls, I would inevitably be driven by a sense of moral obligation to help them, but fundamentally, a request made by Gaen-san wasn't something I could accept so readily.

For an adult that I couldn't know the true nature of, in a sense, she was scarier than a vampire.

Seeing that I stayed quiet instead of giving an immediate response, Gaen-san spoke.

"To be honest, the state of the board is such that I'd like to depend on Koyomin, too. A dependable Koyomin," she said. "It's a situation where someone like me, who likes working behind-the-scenes, had to be dispatched, you see. And if that's not enough, I can even say this... Right now, I'm taking measures to call that Yozuru back here."

"Eh... Kagenui-san?"

Perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised at that. However, I was still more than surprised—I was more surprised than I'd been after seeing two mummies in quick succession. At the very least, my reaction to Gaen-san's statement had to be more than what she'd anticipated.

To call that Yozuru back here.

Certainly, Kagenui-san, Kagenui Yozuru-san, was an onmyouji that specialized in immortal oddities, although it was hard to say that she was a respectable specialist. If anything, she was the specialist in this world that strayed furthest from the correct path—once, in my high school days, when I'd worked with together Gaen-san on a job, even in spite of the fact that an immortal oddity had been involved, Gaen-san had stubbornly refused to rely on Kagenui-san.

That meant that Gaen-san was predicting that this current situation was worse than that time.

In that case, was this something I couldn't ignore? It's not like I particularly had any love for my alma mater (in fact, when I'd still been attending school, I'd absolutely hated it), I'd feel guilty about pretending that I was unrelated to it.

Plus, though I had had almost no interaction with students of other years, it wasn't like there was absolutely no one I knew among my underclassmen... If I imagined one of them becoming the victim of a vampire and turning into a mummy, I couldn't exactly keep calm.

"...However, the practical issue is, if Kagenui-san is going to come, then I don't think that really gives me a chance to act. Or rather, I'd probably just become a hindrance to her. Maybe if I were still a high schooler with stronger aftereffects of my vampirism, but due to various reasons, I've gotten a lot more subdued after entering college."

"That's true. Though you were such an enthusiastic boy back then, it makes me feel lonely to see you all subdued like this."

Yeah, yeah.

"However, Yozuru isn't exactly nimble enough in her footwork to come as soon as she's called. As you're well aware, there are some special circumstances for her. No matter how much she hurries, it'll still take a few days until she arrives at this town... And those few days could very well be crucial to the number of victims."

I see.

If we went that far, then I was now a college student with more than enough time on his hands. If we were speaking of nimbleness in footwork, then I was even better than when I was in high school. Even today, I'd voluntarily skipped my algebra course to respond to Gaen-san's summons.

To tell the truth, there were a lot of circumstances with Kagenui-san that made me feel that it was simply difficult to face her right now, but in that case, it was possible that we could end this oddity phenomenon before she arrived at this town.

And, needless to say, doing that was preferable for Gaen-san, as well.

"Oh yeah. If Kagenui-san's coming here, then I'll have to let Ononoki-chan know, as well... Or rather, Gaen-san, aren't you going to inform Ononoki-chan about this?"

"Well, she herself is in the middle of work on a different case. But it's a secret from you, Koyomin."

"?"

I wonder what it is.

It seemed that Ononoki-chan had recently been hanging out with Sengoku a lot, but if that was the case, then it was hard for me to probe into it... Especially after being specifically told that it was a secret.

"It's important to not sweat the small stuff. If anything, this is just foreshadowing for the next installment. Nonetheless, I have no intention of pressuring you to work with me like I'd done before. If you can state in minute detail a legitimate reason as to why you'd like to flatly refuse getting involved with an incident that could possibly be traumatic, then I'll quickly drop the matter. If that happens, I'll call Kaiki."

"Leave it to me!"

No matter how I saw it, it didn't make sense for Gaen-san to think that that con man would make his entry for a phenomenon of this type, but if she brought out that name anyway, then I didn't really have a choice in the matter.

If it was to keep him as far from this town as possible, I'd do anything.

Con men were prohibited from entering this town.

"Well, con men are prohibited from most towns. Of course, I won't have you be working for free. In exchange for the considerable risk you're about to take, Koyomin, this friendly onee-san will be sure to offer the right amount of compensation."

A considerable risk, you say?

Well, it was quite likely that I would end up facing off against a vampire, and it wasn't like I could nonchalantly linger in safe zones... Not to mention, if I was going to get involved in a case estimated to be more dangerous than the revival of Shishirui Seishirou, I would need to be prepared for that much.

However, if you asked me whether or not I wanted compensation that corresponded to that level of risk, then honestly speaking, I didn't really want it... Frankly, receiving anything from Gaen-san was scary.

The deeper our relations or obligations get, the further into the depths I'd fall.

Being called out each and every time like this was almost like not being able to graduate from high school no matter how much time passed—but as I thought about it like that, Gaen-san spoke as if she'd accurately guessed the contents of my mind.

"If you decide to cooperate in the resolution of this oddity phenomenon, Koyomin... Until you graduate from college, that is, for the next four years or so, I won't appear in front of you again, and I won't even try to contact you. I swear it. You'll be able to go ahead with your bright and happy campus life, free from oddities and specialists," she said.

"For... For real?"

"Yes, for real. You'll never catch me in a lie or in twintails."

If it was Gaen-san in twintails, then I felt like I'd do anything to see that form, but this was a proposal that was even more attractive than that... Well, in another point of view it almost sounded like she was declaring that she'd cut ties with me, and if she swore that much it could even be a bit lonely (which sounded a bit selfish, even for me). But if it meant I could cleanly wash my hands of a life where I would be spoken to with an air of condescension whenever the chance arose, then there was no better compensation for me.

Well, it wasn't exactly clear how credible an oath made by the senior of that con man really was (it was even possible she'd done her hair up in twintails before), but, well, regardless of whether that promise was there, this certainly wasn't a situation that I could ignore.

All my reservations had been cleared up.

In the first place, for Gaen-san, I wasn't exactly a card that was easy to use. And it wasn't the same as with Kagenui-san. It was a problem of being too nimble in footwork. When it came to not moving within Gaen-san's predictions or directions, high school third-year Araragi Koyomi had been especially bad, if I do say so myself—now that I was remembering it, I had better repent for my behavior back then.

If an incident that forced Gaen-san's hand into using this worthless card was occurring in my hometown, then I absolutely couldn't just overlook this... That's right.

Sometimes, it was fine to help out people I didn't know.

"Understood. I'll do my best to work with you, to the extent that it doesn't interfere with my schoolwork—however, I don't want to cause trouble for my family, so I'd like for you be considerate in that respect."

"Ah. Of course, I can do something about that. I'd be well aware of the relationship between Yozuru and Tsukihi-chan even if I wasn't an onee-san that knew everything—oh!"

Just as Gaen-san managed to successfully gain my cooperation, her cell phone began playing a ringtone—well, considering we were inside a hospital, the thing that received a call could be her PHS, her Personal Handy-phone System, instead. She was an onee-san that carried a large number, with various kinds, of telecommunications equipment.

"Hello? Yeah. Yeah. ...Yeah."

As she spoke on the phone, Gaen-san's tone grew lower with every nod.

She was fundamentally an onee-san with a carefree style that didn't suit seriousness at all, but it seemed that the radio waves had managed to deliver information that could make this onee-san stop smiling.

"I have some unfortunate news, Koyomin," said Gaen-san after hanging up. "A third victim was discovered. Once again, a female student from Naoetsu High."

004

If you asked what would be the most striking difference, or perhaps transformation, between the Araragi Koyomi that attended Naoetsu Private High School and the Araragi Koyomi that attended Manase National University, then the most appropriate answer would be the method he took to go to school. Though I'd fundamentally spent my high school days going to school on a bicycle and otherwise on foot, when it came to college, my hands instead gripped the steering wheel of a car.

It was a Volkswagen New Beetle. It was after grueling hours of hard work at my part-time job that I managed to procure a used one in good condition, and I'd further restored it on my own—well, saying so would make a really good impression, but actually, it was a new car that was gifted to me by my parents to celebrate my high school graduation.

I was really being pampered.

Surprisingly enough, the fact that I so easily accepted that amount of pampering without resisting as part of my rebellious phase could actually be considered the biggest difference, or transformation... But putting that aside, after exiting the hospital, I had Gaen-san sit in the back seat of that New Beetle and headed towards the scene of the oddity phenomenon.

If you were wondering why I had her sit in the back seat, it was because a child seat had been affixed to the passenger seat—my passenger seat was reserved for a certain young girl.

"By appearance, isn't Shinobu-chan about 8 years old...? Though it's not even comparable to her in her complete mode, isn't she old enough to not need a child seat?"

"That feeling of having a slightly older kid fit tightly in a child seat is what I like."

"Mm... That's something you'd be better off not telling other people, Koyomin. Even me, an onee-san who knows everything, would have preferred not knowing that."

As we lightly exchanged such witty banter, we headed for our destination, which, as expected, was the school road to Naoetsu High—it wasn't a place that was too far off from the hospital, so we arrived fairly quickly.

Because it was immediately following the discovery of the mummy, I had thought there would be a crowd of onlookers that had formed or police officers that had rushed in, but the area was surprisingly unpopular... Even if it wasn't the time when people were going to school, could a normal road like this really be so deserted?

It had made me a bit suspicious, but it turned out that that was a result of Gaen-san's arrangements.

A way of keeping people out through some sort of barrier, the domain of specialists.

It should have been obvious from the beginning, but I wasn't the only person at Gaen-san's beck and call at this case—Gaen-san's forte was working in a team, and it could be seen as a good outcome that the search party had already managed to discover another victim that had been mummified in the same way as the two that had already been carried to the hospital.

Already. And yet, too late.

It couldn't really be said that finding the third victim was a good thing.

"I know you have some anxiety around strangers, Koyomin, so I had the search party leave the area, too. So you can perform your on-site inspection at a leisurely pace," said Gaen-san.

I was happy for that concern, but my stranger anxiety wasn't that extreme.

Well, from Gaen-san's perspective, she probably didn't want to introduce a temporary member like me to her subordinates, or her "real cooperators"—I could understand that.

Since my education wasn't very good.

"Even so, there's a limit to putting up a paranormal barrier in a residential area in the middle of the day, so let's move quickly. I expect this to have a strong visual impact, Koyomin, so make sure you prepare yourself mentally for that."

And Gaen-san exited from the back seat of the New Beetle... After being shown not one, but two mummified high school girls in quick succession, why was she telling me this now? That was what I'd been wondering as I followed her out, but immediately, I realized the importance of that advice.

Where the third victim had been discovered was, to be precise, inside some kind of shack that I didn't really understand, built on the other side of the guardrail alongside the school road.

Well, it had probably originally been some sort of wooden structure made for some purpose, but now, it could only be seen as some unidentifiable pile of wood... Though I'd said she was inside, it could at best be seen as some sort of awning, and with this many gaps in the woodwork, it likely would be able to keep out neither rain nor wind.

And, at the dried-up mummy inside it, I was rendered speechless.

Comparing the mummy that had been made to wear a patient gown and been laid down on a hospital bed, with the mummy that had been found in this mysterious incomprehensible shack wearing a high school uniform and collapsed on her side as if she had just dropped dead, the visual difference was striking.

Her shoes had fallen off, her clothes were a mess, and her bag had been thrown to the side.

Those details insistently nagged at me that this was the actual reality of things... Even if it was an oddity phenomenon, it was a reality that couldn't be passed off as fantasy.

There was no distinction between reality and delusion.

I was starting to regret having entered a domain that amateurs shouldn't lay a hand on—if it hadn't been Gaen-san that I'd made a promise with, I would probably turn tail and run.

However, it wasn't good to have my whole body tremble in fear.

In fact, it almost made me want to put on airs like a specialist... I tried to act as composed as possible and began to approach the mummy.

"This one also looks like a failure from a vampire transformation," I said, saying something I'd just learned as if I'd known it all along.

As I'd done earlier in the hospital, I took her wrist to feel for a pulse—and then.

"Koyomin, look out!"

It was unusual to hear Gaen-san shout, but it was no wonder she did.

When I'd squatted down near the mummy, she sprang up as if a spring had been installed in her back, and reached her arm out towards me—no, not her arm, but her finger.

And not her finger, but her nail.

The mummy tried to scratch me—tried to tear me to shreds.

"Wh-whoa! Ah..."

Being held down by a high school girl could be considered exciting and pleasurable depending on the circumstances, but if the conditions were that it had to take place inside an ominous shack and the high school girl had to be a mummy, then it definitely wasn't something I could feel happy about—though I'd carelessly approached the mummy to take her pulse, I'd ended up grabbing both of her arms for different reasons—for self-defense reasons.

I was able to somehow defend myself against the girl's ten unpainted nails, but I couldn't do anything about her fangs—by grabbing both her wrists, that also had the effect of sealing my own arms from being used.

And if the mummy, while holding me down, tried to come and bite into me, it wasn't like I could try and bite into her to defend myself.

Though I'd managed to perform all kinds of different kisses in my life, a mummified girl was way out of my strike zone—but ultimately, it was the work of a specialist that sealed the lips of the mummy that came onto me so passionately, and more importantly, the fangs that glinted within those lips.

Rather than sealing them, it was more like Gaen-san unleashed it—and what she unleashed was a cloth-like curtain that had covered the window of the shack.

And with that, the rays of the sun entered indoors, shining like a spotlight onto the mummy, and stopping her movements—like the opposite of a doll that moved using solar cells, as a result of bathing in the sun, the mummy ceased functioning.

As if her soul had been taken from her—if that was even possible—she collapsed onto me. That in itself was pretty frightening, but it seemed I'd just barely managed to escape from the predicament I'd carelessly stumbled into.

Although, considering that Gaen-san had cleaned up the predicament of this amateur college student with the most minimal of actions, perhaps it could hardly be considered a predicament... I see, even if the transformation had failed, the mummy was still a vampire, and was weak to sunlight.

Come to think of it, the hospital rooms where the mummies had been lying had also had the curtains open... And there were probably various other measures in place in that hospital room to seal the mummies' movements.

Even if they had no consciousness, even if the transformation had failed, a vampire was a vampire.

Even drawing near was dangerous.

"So... Sorry, Gaen-san. For acting on my own accord."

Rather than acting on my own accord, this was the result of me acting pretentious.

It was surprising how little I'd grown... Though I didn't know if getting my blood sucked by a mummy that had failed to become a vampire would turn me into a vampire, this had come dangerously close to eerily reproducing the events of that spring break when I was a 17-year-old.

Feeling ashamed of myself, I crawled out from underneath the mummy... But to that, Gaen-san said, "No, it's a great achievement, Koyomin," with some sort of consolation that I didn't understand.

An achievement?

"The name of this girl is Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan. A first-year of Naoetsu High. Because of how tall she is, I'd thought she was a third-year, but it seems kids these days are growing very well."

Without showing any more concern for me, Gaen-san had taken the bag that had been off to the side and looked through her student handbook and wallet and other belongings to obtain the victim's personal information—the first mummy had been a first-year, the second mummy had been a second-year, so the third would be a third-year... But there was no such clever progression.

"Um... Gaen-san. What do you mean by it being an achievement?"

"When Kuchimoto-chan went after you to try and scratch you, Koyomin, she dropped the set of flash cards that were in her hand, you see—you're not a high schooler anymore, Koyomin, but you remember what vocabulary flash cards are, right? The pieces of paper that you use to memorize English words."

Without turning to face me, she promptly tossed me those flash cards—of course I remembered. They were a huge help when I'd been taking entrance exams.

I caught them—it seemed Kuchimoto-chan wasn't particularly studious, as the flash cards were almost brand new. Among those flash cards, only the first one had been used, and what had been handwritten on the surface in red pen wasn't even an English word.

"B777Q".

"...? What is this?"

"I wonder. By the way, there was a pen that seems like it could've written that among the writing materials right next to it—the cap of the pen wasn't even on. It was as if, when being attacked by a vampire, Kuchimoto-chan panicked and grabbed whatever she could to try and memorize that vocabulary word."

Gaen-san spoke carefreely as she fiddled with a smartphone with a strap on it, likely the high school girl's—unfortunately, it seemed a lock had been placed on it, which meant the contents of the phone could not be analyzed by even a specialist proficient with telecommunications equipment.

But anyway, the flash cards.

She tried to memorize vocabulary at that point... There's no way.

If anything...

"By the way, it seems Kuchimoto-san was an avid reader, which is admirable for this day and age. There was a work by Ellery Queen in her bag. You know, that Ellery Queen, famous for her 'Challenges to the Reader'."

And that Ellery Queen was famous for her dying messages as well—although, Kuchimoto-san had failed in a vampire transformation, so she was neither dead nor murdered, so the term dying message wasn't exactly accurate—but, "B777Q".

"It's a code that would elate that mystery maniac Ougi-chan. Although it would be impossible to go and depend on her now."

"Indeed. And she is still a student of Naoetsu High. She may even pull us further into the dark... At least during her stay of execution, I'd like to have her stay quiet."

During her stay of execution, huh? It had a nice ring to it.

Although it didn't particularly seem like she was going to stay quiet, there was no way I should further stimulate her curiosity—although, if more students of Naoetsu High were going to become victims, then that dark girl would very likely start acting on her own.

I was at a loss. If I were still in high school, I'd be able to depend on Hanekawa without hesitation, but... No, wait.

"Gaen-san. Will you please give Koyomin a chance to redeem himself?"

"Hm? What's that?"

"This dying message... Well, maybe we should be calling it a living message, but I think I have an idea about how to solve it. Please allow me to hold onto these flash cards for a bit."

"If you're going to say that much, then I don't mind. Living message, huh? How clever. It's common to make a joke that turns 'dying message' into 'dining message', but going for 'living' is fresh. And discovering that bit of evidence so early on is all thanks to Koyomin, after all—meanwhile, I'll be in charge of this."

Gaen-san had so disappointingly left the task to me that it felt less like she was giving me a chance to redeem myself and more like she'd discovered an even more important clue in her investigation—Gaen-san's line of sight was still resting on Kuchimoto-san's smartphone.

To be precise, what the specialist's keen eyes were looking at was not the locked smartphone itself.

It was the item that was literally connected to it, the strap.

"...Is there something wrong with the strap, Gaen-san?"

To an amateur like me, it looked like nothing but an ordinary strap. It had two accessories in the shape of the alphabet letter "K" dangling from it—without even needing to think about it, they were most likely the initials for the name "KYOUMI KUCHIMOTO".

Even if you locked your cell phone, if you left that personal information dangling out in the open, then it felt pretty meaningless...

"Of course, with just this, it would just be cute accessories that you could see anywhere. But if the second victim known as Honnou Aburi had a similar strap attached to her smartphone, wouldn't the story change?"

"Eh? ...A similar one?"

"Accessories with her initials. For Honnou Aburi-chan, it would be 'A H'... The lettering was the same. Of course, it could just be a coincidence. It could be a simple trend that this onee-san past her prime is unaware of."

The smartphone of the first victim, Harimaze-chan, wasn't decorated with any accessories at all, too—said Gaen-san, making a prudent excuse, before continuing with a "However".

"However, if the victims have something in common besides just being female students of Naoetsu High—there's a possibility that that missing link can tie back to the identity of that unidentifiable vampire as well."

005

Gaen-san called an ambulance to transport the third mummy, Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan, to Naoetsu General Hospital, as the previous two mummies had been. And afterwards, I drove my New Beetle and headed for Manase University.

It wasn't anything like the admirable attitude of a college student to at least attend his afternoon lectures—it was to follow up on the idea I'd had with regards to solving the living message that had been left.

Conveniently, the 5th period course for today was the cryptography course I'd been thinking of—and undoubtedly, Meniko was sure to attend.

Hamukai Meniko.

She was a new friend I'd made in college. Considering she'd become a friend of mine, she was as usual a bit of an oddball, but what was important was that Hamukai Meniko was my first friend in a while to be completely unrelated to monstrous apparitions or evil spirits, urban legends or oddity stories—to be honest, just this made enrolling in university worthwhile.

I was glad I worked so hard to study.

Anyway, when I arrived at Manase University and entered the cryptography lecture hall in a bit of a late fashion, as usual, there was some good news and bad news.

The bad news: class had been canceled.

This was something that happened in college, after all.

However, the good news—there was a single person sitting in the lecture hall, neither reading a book nor playing with her smartphone nor draped over her desk asleep. And the one that was sitting while staring vacantly off into space was the student I was looking for.

"Yo, Meniko."

"Ah. Araragi-chan. Hola. Class is canceled, you know?"

"Hola. Seems like it, huh. But then, what are you even doing here?"

"Because I planned on spending my time here—I guess?"

As if she was wondering for the first time as to why she was sitting in a lecture hall for a canceled class, she responded as if she were playing dumb.

Thinking about it, it had been something like this when I first spoke to her, too—I'd come late to a class that had gotten canceled, and I'd ended up meeting Meniko, who was sitting in the classroom not doing anything.

In short, Meniko was decidedly bad at making changes to a schedule that she'd decided upon—even if a class was canceled, if she decided that she was going to spend that hour in that classroom, she'd move according to that schedule.

She was definitely an oddball. Although not as odd as I was.

But it was thanks to that that I could find her like this—because her personality was like this, it was pretty difficult to make plans over text as a result.

"There's something I want you to take a look at."

Finding it fortunate that the classroom had no one else in it, I took a seat next to Meniko and got straight to the point.

"All ri~ight. I'll look at anythi~ing. If it's a reque~est from Araragi-chan."

"It's about this flash card."

Since it was my first friend in a while with no involvement with oddities, I took special care not to get Meniko tangled up in my various oddity-related affairs, as I'd done with Oikura, while trying to maintain friendly relations with her, but in this case, it probably wouldn't be a problem—or rather, there were certainly many kinds of people in college, and among them, a female college student like this, with such a leisurely atmosphere, that it almost seemed like she was living in a different flow of time, and her hobby was deciphering codes, even when she wasn't a mystery maniac—she was quite an eccentric one.

She'd enrolled as a mathematics student as a result of her code maniac growing intense, and she was a promising ray of light among the first-years, valued highly by even the professor in charge of this cryptography course, although it had been canceled today.

And she was aiming to get a job in the police department's cyber security division or something... So, if I couldn't rely on Hanekawa or Ougi-chan, then I couldn't think of anyone else better than Meniko to ask for help—of course, I didn't reveal the fact that this was, not a dying message, but a living message left behind by a mummy that had failed to become a vampire.

I absolutely wouldn't introduce her to Gaen-san, either.

If I wanted to protect my precious friendships, I had to draw the line there.

"'B777Q'... Hmm?"

It seemed she'd been intrigued by it. It was hard to tell by her facial expression, but fundamentally, if there was something Meniko didn't find interesting, she'd ignore it as if she didn't even see it.

If you took in the fact that she'd so carelessly promised to "look at anything", then her words didn't match up with her actions at all, so it was good that I got her to look at it.

"Flash cards, hu~uh? How nosta~algic. Hm? There's something written on the back, too."

"Huh? The back?"

When I flipped through the cards back in that shack, I had judged that the rest of them had been completely blank, but right, since it they were flash cards, there was a space to write on the back, as well...

I definitely wasn't cut out for the role of a detective.

There were too many things I overlooked.

Nonetheless, when I inspected both sides of the flash cards dropped by Kuchimoto-san that I'd thought to be blank, both the fronts and the backs of almost all of them turned out to blank after all, without anything strange appearing—however, as Meniko had pointed out, on the other side of the very first card with "B777Q" written on it, the numbers "231" had been written in a manner even messier than on the front—"231"?

"B777Q" and "231"?

Absolutely nothing seemed to click for me—but what about the code maniac?

"Yeah. I have no idea."

"So you have no idea, either?"

"Yep. I have no idea. Why Araragi-chan, who's so much smarter than me, couldn't solve such an easy code like this—I have no idea."

So basically, did that mean she solved it?

006

I told Meniko that I could treat her to tea or something as thanks, but she politely declined, saying she had the next lecture to attend—well, that was the case for me as well, but unlike Meniko, I was flexible. The fact that I was not in the least reluctant to skip out on lectures was the same as in my high school days.

And, more simply, I had no time to waste.

Because it was an oddity phenomenon that involved a vampire, I needed to do as much as I could before the sun set—it's good to have a shelter against every storm.

After all, I'd even nearly been torn to shreds by mummies standing on the boundary line of life and death, unclear whether they were living or dead.

If I was going to have to confront the vampire itself—well, since I was under Gaen-san's management, it probably wouldn't develop into a battle, but it would still be better if I could resolve things before Kagenui-san arrived.

As such, I followed my navigation and traveled from Manase University to the Naoetsu General Hospital using the shortest paths possible. After arriving, I called the number of Gaen-san's PHS that I'd gotten from her when we'd parted ways, and had her tell me where Kuchimoto-chan's hospital room was—I'd foolishly wondered if, now that a third victim had appeared, it would be better to put them all in one large room for the sake of convenience, but it seemed Gaen-san wanted to keep them separate.

Well, if those related to the female students (mainly their families) ended up sharing strange information, it could cause a huge uproar—it was probably better to deal with each one of them as its own separate case, with "cause unknown", under the pretense of confidentiality, so as to keep this terrifying supernatural phenomenon behind closed doors and not cause a panic.

Of course, there had to be limits to that, but...

"Hey, Koyomin. You got back pretty quick, didn'tcha?"

Next to Kuchimoto-san, who'd been changed into a patient gown and laid on the bed like the two before her, Gaen-san, who was placing some sort of charm (vampire-sealing?), turned to look at me.

"Did you solve the code? I'd be happy if you said you did. Something a little inconvenient happened on my end, so I'd love to hear some good news."

"Huh. It's pretty unusual for something inconvenient to happen for you while I wasn't there."

"Totally."

Though she wouldn't offer any details, it seemed something truly inconvenient had indeed happened—although, unfortunately, I hadn't been able to return with good news that could make up for that.

Thanks to Meniko, the code I'd been assigned had indeed been solved, but that didn't change the fact that I had no idea what it meant—of course, this was just an amateur's judgment.

Perhaps, if I presented Meniko's solution (decryption) to Gaen-san, a specialist, it would be something immediately recognizable for her.

"My friend, who's planning on majoring in cryptography, solved it in 10 seconds. It was actually a bit too quick to be satisfying, but it was a code that a high schooler thought of, after all."

But it wasn't a code that couldn't be solved.

I put the flash cards on the shelf by the bed and tried to make my explanation brief.

"'B777Q'. If we take it apart, it's made up of a 'B' and a 'Q' with three sevens in between them, but what characteristics do the 'B' and 'Q' have in common?—although, I shouldn't need to start showing off like that in front of you, Gaen-san."

"No, it's fun. Keep going like that."

Even if you encouraged me...

Well, I was happy that she was going along with my self-redemption, now that I noticed it. It seemed she had some good points, when I actually could speak to her like this.

"Well, to sum it up, for the capital letters 'B' and 'Q' that look completely different when written in uppercase, they end up becoming the same shape, but rotated, when written in lowercase as 'b' and 'q'—and, if we think of them having the same shape, then there's a pair of Arabic numerals that also have the same shape."

"That's true. I'm well-aware of it from playing Uno."

"Um, it doesn't matter whether you know about it from playing Uno or not."

It was "6" and "9".

And, as you can see, "6" and "9" more or less had the same shape as "b" and "q"—in other words, after substituting them, we could come up with the equation that "B777Q" equals "67779".

"B777Q" = "67779".

"Oho. I see, I'm following you so far. But what does the number '67779' mean exactly? Do you have an interpretation for that?"

"Though she's aspiring to major in cryptography, that friend, like me, is a mathematics student, so when she sees a number lined up like this, she's the kind of person that thinks of prime factorization first, you see."

"What an annoying kind of person."

"Indeed. However, without even needing to do prime factorization, it should be clear as day that we can split '67779' into three prime numbers. That is, '67/7/79'."

"How is that even clear as day? Something like that is fainter than looking at a ghost."

Gaen-san shrugged her shoulders as if she was astounded.

Even an onee-san that knew everything couldn't know this as thoroughly as a code maniac and a prime number maniac could.

"So? How do you interpret '67/7/79' next?"

Of course, without even needing me to explain what prime numbers were, Gaen-san sought out the next step of the decryption—she was certainly good at using people.

"Well, we had a step where we converted the alphabet into Arabic numerals, right? So it's an orthodox method of doing the opposite now and turning the Arabic numerals back to letters of the alphabet."

"Hm... So is it 'S/D/V'?"

She was sharp.

Yes... "67" was the 19th prime number when you counted from "2". Similarly, "7" was the 4th prime number, and "79" was the 22nd prime number.

"67/7/79" = "S/D/V".

"If she managed to figure that out in 10 seconds, then I can't look down on college students these days, huh. Well, I don't have any complaints so far, but I still don't understand what 'S/D/V' is supposed to mean. You still have more, right?"

"Yes... I'm sure you probably realized this, Gaen-san, but for every piece of a flash card, there's always a backside... In the same handwriting as the front side, the numbers '231' were written."

"I hadn't realized it, though. Don't overestimate this onee-san too much, because I'd hate to disappoint you youngsters. '231'? Since it's obviously divisible by '3', it's naturally not a prime number. Although, among the titles of Maurice Leblanc's works, I think there was something like '313'."

"Since it had been specifically written on the back side, we should take this not as another code, but a sub-key to use as a hint... That is, it could be pointing out the order."

"The order? So, we should take the three letters pointed at by the code on the front side, and put them in the order of '2-3-1', like an anagram? So basically, 'S/D/V' becomes 'D/V/S'..."

"S/D/V" = "D/V/S".

It was likely that, in order to give off an air of perfection, the code had been rearranged to show the three sevens, "777", and this was an operation to put everything back.

Even I thought that "B777Q" looked better than "77QB7".

Putting it all together...

"B777Q" = "b777q" = "67779" = "67/7/79" = "S/D/V" = "D/V/S".

That was it—I was happy that I was being overestimated with her saying "Araragi-chan, who's so much smarter than me", but really, Meniko, arriving at something like this was impossible for me.

However, for a code maniac like Meniko, her decryption only went as far as this—just because "S/D/V" was "D/V/S", it still didn't change the fact that it was completely meaningless.

We could only decipher up to here for now.

However, if Gaen-san continued to say, "I still don't understand. You still have more, right?", then I'd have to throw my hands up—but the onee-san that knew everything stayed silent.

"......"

Without pressing further, and without even stating her own thoughts, she put a hand to her mouth, quietly behaving as if she were deep in thought.

Was there an interpretation that a specialist could make, as I had hoped? Could "D/V/S" be some sort of specialized term used by specialists... For example, something like "Dracula vampire soulless"...

But, as if chiding me for thinking something so stupid, Gaen-san said, "This is indeed an abbreviation, but these are initials, Koyomin. For example—the initials of a name like, 'Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster'."

"D/V/S" = "DEATHTOPIA VIRTUOSO SUICIDEMASTER".

007

It was an awfully specific name to use just as an example, but it seemed as Gaen-san had no intention of explaining any further, as she said, "Thanks, Koyomin. It seems like we might have something to go off of now," cutting short the conversation with her gratitude. "Give your friend my thanks, as well."

"Ah, yes..."

If the leader wrapped it up like this with that much force, I couldn't exactly go against it... Well, the fact that Gaen-san wasn't explaining it could mean that it was better off for me not to know. At least, for now...

In any case, for now we could put aside the deciphering of the living message that the third mummy, Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan, left behind... As for me, I was more curious about Gaen-san's gloomy face that she'd shown when I entered the room.

Something inconvenient happened. That was what she'd said.

That's why she wanted some good news.

Even though she had said thanks, it didn't necessarily dispel the gloom from Gaen-san's expression, so I wondered if what I had brought was not good news but bad news. However, I couldn't just pretend to ignore whatever inconvenient thing happened while I'd been out.

"It might have been a bit of an exaggeration to call it inconvenient. Or rather, if it's like this, then I should say I'm glad I called you in in advance, Koyomin... In a way, this is fate. Well, because of the cell phone straps, I was wondering if there was another point in common between the victims aside from just them attending the same school, so I did a little invasion of the girls' privacy."

"When you put it like that, it makes it really hard to understand what exactly you're a specialist of, Gaen-san."

"As a result, I uncovered a completely unforeseen fact. All three of them were a part of the same club."

"The same club?"

Ah, then even if they were in different years, it would still make sense for them to be connected by having the same kind of strap... Although, I'd never been a part of a club, so I'd hardly associated with anyone who wasn't in my year.

Then, it wasn't just Kuchimoto-chan and Honnou-chan, but even the first mummy, Harimaze-chan, that were connected by a common missing link—but what was inconvenient about that?

Wasn't that a good thing?

It seemed much more concrete than the information I'd gone all the way to my college to bother a friend for, and it seemed like a much better clue that would take us a step closer to the resolution of the incident...

"And that club happens to be the girls' basketball club."

"Ah."

I understood. I understood very well.

Because, even though Gaen-san had almost nothing to be afraid of, specializing in all sorts of monstrous apparitions, she happened to have a single weakness, an organization that reminded her of her older sister... The Naoetsu High girls' basketball club.

Gaen Tooe.

That was the name of Gaen-san's sister, the onee-san's sister, and that onee-san's sister's daughter's name was Kanbaru Suruga—currently a third-year high school girl at Naoetsu High, and the former captain of the girls' basketball club.

She was one of the few juniors I'd interacted with—more precisely, she was the junior of my girlfriend, but, anyway, the keyword "mummy" was something that really had a bad affinity with Kanbaru.

And even if that weren't the case, the Naoetsu High girls' basketball club was rather unique... It was on quite a different level for a club that was in that uptight university-focused school.

Even if there were no oddities, it was still an odd organization.

If all three victims were members of the girls' basketball club, then it seemed impossible to just pass off as a coincidence... Although it was also dangerous to assume that that was the source of the incident.

Though I didn't remember when, a specialist had once said this.

Oddities have their own appropriate reasons—indeed.

Even the vampire that sucked out my blood during my spring break as a 17-year-old had inevitably had her own reason for doing so.

And if it happened that this case was also inevitable...

"We'd have to keep digging into it, right? Um, so basically... It would be better if I was the one to do that, right?"

"Right. I shouldn't get any more involved with Suruga, after all."

That was probably what she'd meant by when she said she was glad she'd called me in in advance... Once before, during an incident that wasn't just oddity-related, but also vampire-related, Gaen-san had needed to make use of Kanbaru's "left arm", and had operated under a fake name to do so.

She'd needed to do that much, because it was that taboo for her to step on her sister's shadow.

Though she was someone that was fuzzier than Oshino, she was strict about at least that much.

"Not to mention, Suruga has lost her 'left arm' now—or should we say she 'recovered' it? Really, Kaiki did something so unnecessary. Because of that, I lost another one of my successors."

"...Thinking about what happened before, I feel the same way in not wanting to get her involved. But, well."

I looked towards the bed... The third girl to be mummified, Kuchimoto Kyoumi.

After seeing her dried-up form once again, I knew I couldn't say that.

"In the first place, since it's been a while since Kanbaru retired from the basketball club, so it could be doubtful whether or not she has any useful information."

"Even so, I'd like you to do it. Since she's sociable like her mother, there's no way she wouldn't know even a single one of her juniors—if possible, I'd like to get a list of all the club's members."

"Understood."

And, though I accepted it, I couldn't reject the feelings of reluctance that followed. Because no matter how much caution I took, if I came to her with a weird approach, then Kanbaru would be sure to recklessly poke her nose into these affairs... At the very least, I didn't want a repeat of the events of the previous incident.

I checked the watch on my right wrist, confirming that it was currently in the middle of 6th period at the high school—at this rate, it should be possible to meet up with Kanbaru before the sun set.

Unlike Meniko, since Kanbaru was preparing for entrance exams, it was probably better to set things up over text beforehand... Or should I just handle everything by calling her? Although, considering the circumstances, I did want to meet up and talk to her directly...

"Also, I may as well let you know what I've ascertained after going through her belongings, Koyomin. From the on-site inspection, I had come to the conclusion that this girl had to have been attacked by the vampire this morning, but it turns out that she'd become a victim as early as dawn of yesterday."

"Yesterday? Um, then... She was the third person to be discovered, but Kuchimoto-san was actually the second victim?"

"Yep. That's how it is. She'd been missing for almost an entire day—that's what I learned after contacting her family. Putting it all together, Naoetsu High first-year Harimaze Kie-chan was attacked in the evening of the day before yesterday—and, before daybreak, the vampire attacked another Naoetsu High first-year, Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan. It's still unclear whether the vampire sucked her blood in that shack or the vampire sucked her blood and then moved her to that shack, but regardless, it was done in the night—as a vampire does, it took a break during the day after the sun rose, and when night fell again, it bit into the neck of the Naoetsu High second-year, Honnou Aburi-chan, in her own home."

The permutation had changed, but, if anything, it broke down the hypothesis, high-paced as it was, that one victim was formed per day—by now, it wasn't exactly good news to hear.

This vampire was quite a glutton.

"Speaking of which, didn't vampires need permission to enter the houses or rooms of others? The second... that is, the third victim, Honnou-chan—wasn't she discovered in the futon of her own room?"

"There are variations to that idea, so I can only say that it depends on the circumstances. There are times when that's the case, and there are times when it isn't—however, if the culprit was some extremely handsome man with a well-proportioned body and an annual income of 500 million yen, like Shishirui Seishirou, then there's probably no high school girl that would not let someone like him enter their room."

Well, I wasn't sure about Shishirui Seishirou's annual income being 500 million yen, but, well, that was indeed a truth, or perhaps divine providence... It was also possible that, as was conjectured with Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan's case, the unidentified vampire sucked the blood of the girl in an alleyway, turned her into a mummy, and then carried her into her room after that... Although I had no idea why it would do something like that.

"Of course, there might be even more victims, so I'll keep an eye out in this town for more dried-up mummies, not just limited to the female students of Naoetsu High—really, it feels more like searching for an ancient civilization, instead of just an oddity story. It's fortunate for now that the search range is just within this town, but depending on the situation, we may need to expand it even further."

"...Would it help if we asked Hachikuji for assistance?"

If we were talking about this town, then that lost child had become this town's god, so she'd probably be aware of troubles that were occurring in town... It was possible that she knew something.

"Hmm. I wonder about that. There's certainly a high possibility for that, but since she's become a god, that means by now that she's firmly on the side of the oddities."

"I see."

I wouldn't exactly be able to deal with depending on my old friend and putting her in a dilemma between humans and oddities.

Even gods had their own positions to keep in mind—if I appealed to her using my friendship and ended up toppling her from the seat of a god, that lost child could end up falling straight to hell without getting lost on the way.

After all, the road to the Kitashirahebi Shrine had become a throughway to hell.

And that was something that—well, it didn't really pain me to say it.

"Well, in any case, I'll set up plans to meet up with Kanbaru for now. And while I'm at it, I'll go and clean up her room really quick."

"That's a pretty incredible task to just do while you're at it. My niece is really causing trouble for you."

Although she wasn't as bad as you.

Well, I suppose it ran in the family.

"What will you do now, Gaen-san?"

"Though I feel bad because you and the search party are all working hard, I'm going to borrow an open bed in the hospital and take a nap—since I'm going to have to be active at night. No matter how young I dress myself up as, at this age, pulling an all-nighter is rough."

Well, that made sense.

As long as vampires were nocturnal, you'd have no choice but to adjust your biological clock to deal with their movements—even sleeping was part of the job.

Incidentally, a benefit of my aftereffects was that I didn't need to plan my sleep schedule like Gaen-san—it didn't put too much strain on me if I lost one or two nights of sleep. My vampire constitution had been modestly useful during my exam period.

"Oh yeah, by the way, Gaen-san. What should I tell Shinobu about this case? There's no doubt she'll wake up once night falls, after all."

Like with Kanbaru, during the case of Shishirui Seishirou, Oshino Shinobu had also been put to work, but I couldn't say that that weak-minded little girl had been totally useful.

If anything, she'd totally gotten in our way.

Well, I could sympathize with her situation, so I couldn't one-sidedly criticize her for her actions, and I had no intention of doing so, but if this was going to revive her feelings of remorse from that time, then perhaps we'd be better off excluding her from this case from the beginning.

After being sealed in my shadow, she had become not quite a half-vampire and more of a half-slave, but she wasn’t the kind of person that worked the way I wanted her to.

"After all, since they're both vampires, it could end up being someone she knows. That in itself would put her in a dilemma."

"For sure. It could be someone she knows. That would put her in a dilemma," repeated Gaen-san, nodding suggestively. "Well, we can think about that while she's sleeping. For now, focus on getting as much information as you can before tonight."

"Understood."

008

As I stepped on the accelerator on the way to Kanbaru's house, I pondered the possibility that the note that had been jotted down on that flash card was not actually a living message.

"B777Q" = "D/V/S".

It seemed Gaen-san had come up with some sort of hypothesis, and I believed Meniko's decryption had been right—however, for a code left behind just before the victim was transformed into a mummy, I felt that it was a little too elaborate.

Because, even if the cryptography was correct, this wasn't a mystery novel... Perhaps Ougi-chan would be convinced by it, but if you were being attacked by a vampire, or some other bad guy, would you really have the luxury of considering what the 22nd prime number was, or thinking that putting the three sevens together as "777" looked better?

No matter how much of a hard worker she was at school...

To be honest, even for me, who I could only recognize as having made it into college through his math skills alone, counting the prime numbers wasn't something I could easily do in my head, especially when I was driving like this... And if I were in a panic from being attacked, I was sure it would be close to impossible.

Well, it would be possible if it were Hanekawa, or even Meniko... Perhaps we could leave open the possibility that Kuchimoto Kyoumi-chan was one of those rarely seen child prodigies, but looking at those blank flash cards, it was hard to see her as anything but a studious honors student...

Especially if she was a member of the girls' basketball club known for its intense training... It was the same for Kanbaru, but that club had a system where you wouldn't be able to keep up if you didn't do your duties.

In that case, perhaps it wasn't a living message, or even a dying message—wasn't it more appropriate to deduce that this was actually the "signature" of the "culprit" vampire?

Signature, a declaration of crime, a proclamation of war, a self-expression.

It didn't matter what you called it, but it supported the theory of it being "initials" like Gaen-san mentioned briefly, or maybe even carelessly—it wasn't that the victim left behind the initials of the "culprit", but that the "culprit" left behind their own initials in the hands of the victim?

As if—making themselves known.

...If that was the case, the first (for now) victim, Harimaze Kie-chan, or the second (to be discovered) victim, Honnou Aburi-chan, could have something hidden among their personal belonging that involved such a self-inflated signature.

Should I let Gaen-san know about that? No, if it was a possibility on a level that I could come up with, then there was no way that Gaen-san didn't already hit upon it... And even if she hadn't, it wasn't a hypothesis worth waking her up, when she was trying to recharge herself for the coming night.

For now, I would focus on my own duty.

And as I pondered, the New Beetle arrived at the Japanese mansion where Kanbaru lived... I hadn't completely gotten free of the appeal of bicycles, but in the end, cars were on a completely different level in terms of mobility—I barely had the time to guess at deductions while I was traveling.

As if working as parking attendants, my junior stood outside the open gates, still in uniform on the way back from school—but, oh? It wasn't just one junior that was there.

Next to Kanbaru stood another female student, naturally wearing a Naoetsu High uniform as well—by the color of her necktie, she was a third-year, but who was she?

"Let me introduce you, Araragi-senpai. This is my friend from when I was in the basketball club, Higasa. After I retired, she took over as captain."

In a somewhat rushed greeting, Kanbaru introduced her classmate and friend to me when I left my car—her friend, who had been the captain of the girls' basketball club until very recently. I see, so when I let her know about the general idea of my business over the phone, she'd made some arrangements.

What a capable junior. I was unworthy of her.

"It's nice to meet you, Araragi-senpai. My name is Higasa Seiu. I've heard rumors about you for some time now."

"Haha. I'm sure they weren't any good rumors, right?"

"Ahahahahahahahahaha."

I was laughed at in an almost unnatural way. It seemed they weren't good rumors.

"Come inside, Araragi-senpai. No point in standing around here. Grandpa and Grandma are out on a trip, so they'll be away until the day after tomorrow, but even I can at least make tea for you."

"Eh. Um, but, your room..."

"It's fi~ine. I already know about it."

Though I'd been in a panic, Higasa-chan spoke up as if in total understanding—it seemed my capable junior had a capable friend. I felt a bit of relief at learning that Kanbaru had a friend among her peers that could tolerate such a chaotic room—but, anyway, I didn't want to overstay my welcome.

The problem in Kanbaru's left arm had been resolved, and it seemed she was lively and in high spirits, so let's quickly finish up my business here and take my leave—before she found out that I was playing around with her aunt.

"Here, have some tea, Araragi-senpai. I haven't put anything suspicious in it, so drink up without any worries."

"You don't need to add that remark!"

"Ahahahahahahahahaha."

Perhaps she was just someone who simply got drunk on laughter, but it seemed Higasa-chan didn't particularly mind sitting with and relaxing with a senior she'd just met, in this room whose mess seemed almost like a lie—as expected of Kanbaru's friend, she sure was easy-going.

"No, no, I'm actually very shy. Unlike Ruga, who's so boorish."

Although she certainly didn't seem like it.

Also, so Kanbaru was called "Ruga" by her friends...

For a moment, I'd been about to lean into the description of my cute junior as boorish, but in terms of our relationships, Higasa-chan was much closer to Kanbaru than I was, so it would be weird to condemn her evaluation.

"However, Araragi-senpai, you feel like someone I've known for a long time, so it doesn't really feel like we've just met for the first time."

"Really, what kind of rumors are floating around about me...?"

She was speaking as if I was someone like Lieutenant Columbo.

"You were the only delinquent among Naoetsu High's graduates, after all."

So that wasn't just Hanekawa's own misunderstanding?

Aw man.

"Although, just from hearing the rumors, it makes me quiver with fear. I'm so awestruck, so please forgive me if I end up being discourteous in any way out of my nervousness. Oh yeah, and I want to brag to all my friends, so could I please have your number?"

She didn't even hesitate.

Attached to the cell phone that was cheekily yet amiably presented to me was a strap with the letters "S H" as accessories... Hmm, it seemed that she had still left it on even after retiring.

What about Kanbaru?

Ah, that's right, her getting a cell phone was something that happened after she met me—it ended up being like that.

"So... About the girls' basketball club."

"Yes, yes. I have the data prepared right here."

From her school bag, Higasa-chan deftly pulled out a file that looked rather thick—it looked almost like a class's attendance record, but considering the context, it was most likely a register for the club.

"Since I joined the club, it's always been Higasa that kept records of all our activities, you see. If it were me, I wouldn't have even thought to make a list like that, and even if I did, I probably would have lost it somewhere," said Kanbaru.

Indeed, seeing the wretched state of this room that I had cleaned just the other day, I could see that she wasn't just being modest to praise her friend.

Though Higasa-chan had retired after she'd become a third-year, she'd still been present during the recruitment for the club in April, as she seemed to be completely aware of the affairs of the current second-years and the current first-years—however, when I reflexively reached out, she suddenly raised her hands in a banzai and kept the register out of my reach.

Like a basketball player trying to prevent a steal—or not.

"What is it? Nobody said, 'put your hands up!', Higasa-chan."

"Yeah. We-ell, Araragi-senpai. I shouldn't even need to say this, but this is the personal information of a hundred high school girls, after all," said Higasa-chan with a smile, holding the register in the air.

A hundred?

I turned to Kanbaru—and she nodded.

Wow, so the girls' basketball club had a hundred members.

A hundred members just from the first- and second-years... So were there at least fifty from each year? With a concrete number being defined, it put me at even more of a loss than when we had hypothesized an unspecified large number of victims.

Gaen-san had said something like "two out of a hundred", but that should have been just an example...

Well, for a sports club that competed on a national level, it could even be considered a fewer number of people than usual...

"To be exact, it's not fifty from each year. There are 76 second-years and 24 first-years, for a total of one hundred," said Higasa-chan. "So, even if this was something I made personally, if word got out that I leaked something like this, it wouldn't exactly end well for me."

"Right. Yeah, that's true."

I couldn't do anything but agree—I knew that, as someone who'd already graduated, and as someone who'd been part of the go-home club with absolutely no relation to the girls' basketball club, it was from the beginning a rather selfish request to ask for a hundred girls' worth of names, addresses, and contact information.

"Yes. If that happened, my blood will be spilled."

She was probably joking, but just today I'd laid eyes on three mummies with the blood sucked completely out of them, so I couldn't exactly go, "Ahahahahahahahahaha".

"Yes. It's not something to laugh about. It's not just their names and addresses and contact information—it even has their height and weight and three sizes and whether or not they have a partner."

"I'm sorry to take up more of your time, but Higasa-chan, would you mind blacking out those parts for me?"

"Even though it wouldn't end well for me, if I handed these records over to that Araragi-senpai infamous for being a hentai..."

"Infamous for being a hentai?"

"No. I said Araragi-hentai, infamous for being a senpai."

If that was what you said, that sounded even more cruel.

Should I go to Naoetsu High starting now to try and fix my bad reputation?

"Higasa. Being a hentai is my territory. And don't act all buddy-buddy and have fun with Araragi-senpai."

From off to the side, "Ruga" demonstrated the narrowness of her dignity.

Really, I couldn't feel any star power from her at all... And yet, they still called her the legendary ace of the basketball club.

However, if her intention was to protect the personal information of her members as an ex-captain, then Higasa-chan surely would not have even bothered to bring the register to this mansion on Kanbaru's request in the first place.

"I see. Understood, Higasa-chan. If I want to get that register, then you're saying I have to defeat you in a game of street basketball, right?"

"Um, no, that's not what I'm saying."

So it wasn't that? But I'd already taken off my jacket.

"Rather than that, the reason I'm risking becoming a bloody mess to lend you this top-secret register, Araragi-senpai, is in the hopes that maybe you'll be able to break down the current state of the Naoetsu High girls' basketball club."

"...? The current state of the club?"

"Higasa. If you ask that much from Araragi-hentai..."

While I was tilting my head at the rather unsettling wording, Kanbaru rebuked her friend—you're also calling me Araragi-hentai, aren't you.

You absolutely can't lend out the personal information of a hundred high school girls to someone like that!

"No, no. Even you feel some responsibility for it, though, don't you, Ruga? For the girlsbas right now. Perhaps even more than me."

"That's... Ah, Araragi-hentai. 'Girlsbas' is just a shortened form of 'girls' basketball club', and, most assuredly, does not mean the girls' bath."

"Could it actually be you that's spreading around my bad reputation, Kanbaru-kouhai?"

In any case, it seemed that, even between the two ex-captains, they didn't share the same opinion. And hearing that much, I wasn't the kind of Araragi-hentai that would back down so easily.

Not to mention, if there was some sort of trouble in the girls' basketball club right now, then, surprisingly enough, it could have some connection to the cause of the current serial mummification incident.

"Let me know what's going on. After all, I didn't come here to ask for help without doing anything in return. If there's something bothering you, I'll do my best to help."

"I'm very happy you feel that way, but it's enough to have you come over to clean my room every week or so, Araragi-senpai."

"Isn't that actually more than enough, Ruga...?" said Higasa-chan, scowling as if saying, don't say things that will make it harder for me to rely on Araragi-senpai. She then turned to me and said, "It's kinda in big trouble, the girlsbas after we retired," in an informal tone.

Really, what part of you was shy?

"It's not really a matter of there being any specific reason, but the atmosphere feels awful... When I visited the gym to try and be senpai-like and have them let off some exam stress, it almost felt like I put more stress on them instead."

Perhaps it was because of that that this girl was joking around in order to not make the atmosphere around here heavy as well—if so, she had a pretty good personality... Kanbaru had been acting as if she was embarrassed by her friend's behavior, but really, what you should be ashamed of is the state this room is in.

"Does it have to do with them getting weaker? Like, they fell out of the golden age that had the two of you in it."

I probably should have chosen my words better for that, but as someone with a small vocabulary, I couldn't think of another way to express it—they got weaker.

Although, well, that could just be inevitable, in a sense.

In a sense, Kanbaru was just too extraordinary.

To be even called a superstar, she was a student that was far more out-of-place than I was at Naoetsu High, a private school that was university-focused...

"That's true. Since I just worked really hard at my studies to chase after Senjougahara-senpai who I yearned for so much."

"Incidentally, I'm a sports-minded girl who can study without even needing to work hard at it."

Higasa-chan boastfully puffed out her chest, still keeping both her arms raised.

Well, there were those sorts of people, too.

"But I don't think it's because they got weaker. If anything, I'd say that would be even better for them... But, the atmosphere turned bad."

"The atmosphere—"

"The girls' basketball club stopped being a club that's bright and fun with a sense of solidarity," explained Kanbaru, almost unwillingly, in a way that was very much unlike her. "They lost their sense of solidarity—and all that was left was a sense of collective responsibility. And, to be specific..."

Kanbaru Suruga paused, then continued.

"Out of the hundred members listed in that register, five of them have gone missing."

009

According to Higasa-chan, saying that they'd "gone missing" was a bit of an exaggerated take from my rash junior, but to sum it up, among the first- and second-years, there were five members who couldn't be contacted.

Surprisingly enough, I was already familiar with three out of the five names they gave—although it wasn't that surprising.

Harimaze Kie. Honnou Aburi. Kuchimoto Kyoumi.

I could understand up to that point.

Thanks to Gaen-san's deft manipulation of information, and perhaps even an embargo of information, the various mummified girls were being treated as having a "strange disease", so their matters weren't publicized—as such, the three of them were seen from the outside as absent for some vague reason, the actual circumstances imperceptible.

"Gone missing".

Up to that point, it was a pre-established harmony, in a sense, so it wasn't worth getting shocked or taken aback—the problem would be the fact that two more names were included in the group of "missing" girls.

It was a fact that I didn't want to face.

It was a bit premature to assume that both of them had already fallen victim to a vampire, but even if that wasn't the case, five students going "missing" was more than enough to be a huge incident, wasn't it?-although, that was just what I thought as someone who'd already graduated, but, thinking back to when I'd still been enrolled, I had to conclude that that wasn't necessarily true.

I'd already mentioned that I'd skipped class in high school a lot, but it wouldn't exactly be right to say that, at this university-focused school where people "going missing" was rare, everyone but me was an honors student.

If you wondered what happened to the students that couldn't keep up in class, that weren't suited to the school tradition of having the top standard score, that ended up falling behind... Well, in short, you'd say they—"went away".

They'd transfer, or they'd drop out.

Or, like Oikura Sodachi, they'd shut themselves in their own home—they "went away".

What Higasa-chan had said was certainly right, and a "delinquent that graduated from Naoetsu High" like me was certainly rare.

It had to be an exaggeration to say that I was the "only" one, but most of them didn't make it to graduation.

They'd go away—they'd disappear.

As if they'd never been there in the first place—so, at Naoetsu High, becoming "unable to see" a student was not an especially unusual affair.

What the school was turning a blind eye to was not the students that fell behind themselves, but the idea that the school even had students that fell behind to begin with. That was the reality—the real problem.

Well, it wasn't just Naoetsu High. All private schools probably wanted to avoid scandals like that...

But, in terms of the trouble occurring in the girls' basketball club this time, what was different about it was that it wasn't trouble that stemmed from the intensity of class or exams, but trouble that stemmed from training and teamwork.

"Ruga herself will probably deny this, but to be perfectly clear, Naoetsu High's girlsbas was a club made around Kanbaru Suruga, because of Kanbaru Suruga, for Kanbaru Suruga, after all... Even from when I joined, I proactively worked to lead the club in direction, as well," said Higasa-chan. "I don't think doing that in itself was wrong, and it was because of that that we could make it to Nationals, after all. The problem was that, even after Ruga hurt her left arm and had to retire, that arrangement ended up being passed down as is... At least when I was captain, I did my best to fool the club to somehow keep things going, but after retiring in April, it fell apart all in one go."

A goal that was too far, training that was too hard, peer pressure that couldn't be escaped...

Not a sense of solidarity, but a sense of collective responsibility.

"Sports isn't something people should be suffering through, so if it's that harsh, then I feel like they'd be better off resigning, though."

Since the club was formed around her existence, it was hard to deny it completely, but Kanbaru, who was usually a straightforward person, spoke instead with a weak tone of voice.

"Even if they did want to resign, they probably don't want to be the first to do so."

"That's something I can't understand."

"Well, of course you can't, Ruga." And, as if exasperated, or maybe to sidestep the subject, Higasa-chan said, "There were kids that did resign, of course. Not that they sent in with an official notification of their resignation, since they resigned after getting hurt during practice."

Higasa-chan made it sound like they got hurt on purpose to resign... And I couldn't say that I didn't understand how they felt.

Although I couldn't say it was exactly the same, when I'd been studying for exams, I'd been tempted by the idea of hurting myself in order to avoid tackling a problem set for hours on end—of course, because of my vampire constitution, it didn't actually go well, but I could only say that there had been something wrong with me at the time.

In other words, there was something wrong here.

With the girls' basketball club right now.

Because they'd lost the support of the Kanbaru era—or rather, they'd lost the core.

"So, we knew we needed to do something about it, so we had a meeting of the OG third-years and debated over what to do, and, well, it's not like we didn't try to put some of our countermeasures in action, but it was like they backfired, since over the past few days, more and more members have stopped coming to school—and because it looks like there are no problems on the surface, it feels even worse than it should be. Even the ones that are having a hard time feel a sense of fulfillment or get filled with euphoria when they reach a stopping point, so they get stuck in place. And if someone carelessly complains about something, everyone else gets together and enjoys criticizing that person."

"It's hard for us to change that structure from where we are, Araragi-senpai. Or rather, it's because our generation is the one that made that structure in the first place, so what they're doing is almost exactly the same as what we're doing."

"Yeah. The difference is just how they feel about it. ...Um, it's possible that maybe we were wrong to set that up in the first place. Our advisor, who'd lived in an age of corporal punishment and a prevalent pecking order, had given us the opinion that 'it might not fit the current generation, but it was still good in its own way', and we didn't want to ignore that. Well, from the day I joined to the day I retired, I'm pretty sure I had fun every day, right?"

Well, who knows.

It was true that it was hard to deny a process before seeing the results, but the undeniable reality was that, even if they said and did the same things, if the people doing those things changed, then the impression would also change—however, in that case, I could understand how Kanbaru and Higasa-chan felt, about how it would be hard to guide their juniors that were just imitating them.

"The school itself is keeping us from saying anything, so we were basically at our wits' end when you approached us, Araragi-senpai. I almost thought this was a godsend."

They must have really been at their wits' end if they thought being approached by a pervert was a godsend, but anyway.

It was true that the timing was good.

Considering the current era, if it weren't for this timing, I doubted Higasa-chan would've even told me about the register's existence—however, I still couldn't say if this was inevitable or just a coincidence.

If the trouble in the girls' basketball club had a direct connection to the vampire turmoil occurring in this town—for Higasa-chan, she probably would never have guessed that I was already busy trying to resolve that trouble.

"...Hmm."

However, I still stopped to think.

I stopped to compare things with my experiences from last year... or not. What I was actually remembering were the words of my classmate, Hanekawa.

At the time, she had certainly been having some trouble, even though she didn't show it. And Hanekawa Tsubasa, whose worries had driven her up to the wall, had thought, during her spring break as a 17-year-old, that she "wanted to meet a vampire".

It was an earnest desire [setsubou].

It was despair [zetsubou].

To meet an incomprehensible monster that could burst through the immovable walls of reality, of real problems, in a single blow—even after graduating from high school, the Hanekawa that had spread her wings overseas was like that.

In that case, was it really so farfetched to infer that the students troubled over their club and worried about their school life thought, in the same way, that "it would be so much easier if a vampire came an attacked me"...?

And if that strong, earnest desire—or perhaps, that strong despair—was the missing link that connected the victims.

I couldn't afford to not determine the whereabouts of the remaining two names that had gone missing—especially if they hadn't been mummified yet, but no, even if they did already have their blood sucked.

"I got it, Higasa-chan. I don't really think a blockhead like me can do anything about the delicate problems that girls face—but if you can lend me that register, I promise I'll do my best to make sure that no more members go missing among your juniors, at the very least."

"Just you promising that is enough for me."

And though I knew that my words wouldn't give any peace of mind, Higasa-chan still said that and lowered her arms that had been raised all this time, handing over the register to me.

"By the way, Araragi-senpai, do you have a girlfriend?"

010

Nervously wondering about what would have happened if I had said that I didn't, and feeling embarrassed at myself for allowing myself to be teased by a high school girl that I'd met for the first time, I once again headed back to the Naoetsu General Hospital.

I'd ended up feeling a lot gloomier as a graduate of Naoetsu High, but just from the results, I'd managed to obtain the member list of the girls' basketball club fairly easily, so I assumed Gaen-san would still be in the middle of her nap in preparation for the night, and I started thinking about how I might be praised for my quick work, but when I arrived, the specialist was already awake.

Didn't she only sleep for about 30 minutes?

Even though she'd said that pulling an all-nighter was rough, was this woman also a short sleeper, like other eminent figures were...? In any case, I returned to the first hospital room I'd visited that day, containing the mummy of Harimaze Kie-chan, first-year of Naoetsu High and a member of the girls' basketball club, and relayed the information to Gaen-san in much the same way as a carrier pigeon would.

"I see. You're really living out your youth, huh?"

Those were her first words.

Well, for Gaen-san, who was from a completely different era, and had never even attended Naoetsu High, that may be how it seemed.

As someone who'd known firsthand of Kanbaru Suruga flourishing as a versatile superstar, it honestly pained me just hearing about the state of affairs in the current girls' basketball club, but it was useless to try and have those feelings be shared by an unrelated third party.

It was surely the same as how, for a fresh-faced college first-year like me, the concepts of employment or marriage were something I still couldn't understand.

"That's a little upsetting to hear. Even this onee-san had a period where she was in her youth, you know? A youth spent with Oshino and Kaiki and Kagenui... And a youth spent with my sister. Indeed, just as how youth is written with the kanji for 'blue' and 'spring', it was a springtime that turned me blue with shock."

"...I'm very sorry about that."

However, it was absolutely true that I couldn't picture Gaen-san and company in their teenage years... Especially not a teenage version of Kanbaru's mother, Gaen Tooe-san.

"From what you're saying, Koyomin, so far, there's no evidence to conclude that this has anything to do with the girls' mummification, but there is equally no evidence to dismiss it as irrelevant, either. So the members of the girls' basketball team were feeling depressed, wondering why they had to sacrifice their studies and devote themselves to grueling practices, when the seniors that would aim that high were already gone—and perhaps the vampire was attracted by the darkness in their hearts. That hypothesis does have a certain degree of plausibility."

"Oddities have a fitting reason to their existence—right?"

"Well, let this onee-san that knows everything tell you that the period of time that Suruga was a member of the team wasn't necessarily a healthy and beautiful adolescence, either. Putting aside the other girls, it wasn't as if that niece of mine got faster for a positive reason."

Indeed.

The superstar hadn't been a superstar from the moment she was born. Rather, circumstances made it so that she had to become a superstar.

Because she made a wish to a monkey.

"Even if she was freed from that monkey, it doesn't mean she's been freed from the worries of her adolescence. Well, it's the fate of upperclassmen to be bothered by their underclassmen. We'll just have to roll with it in order to uphold the cheap promise you made, Koyomin."

First off, why don't we focus on searching for the remaining two "missing" members of the club?—said Gaen-san, deciding on our plan of action after riffling through the register I gave her.

"Of course, we'll also be confirming the locations of the remaining members, too. Kanguu Misago-chan and Kiseki Souwa-chan—both second-years."

"Hypothetically, if those two have already had a run-in with the vampire, then out of the five victims, there would be three second-years and two first-years."

Not that I could draw any conclusions from that, and I might have been getting ahead of myself considering their mummies hadn't been discovered yet.

But I didn't want to turn away from unpleasant possibilities just because the pessimism would bum me out—I wanted to think of everything I could, so that I could deal with the worst-case scenario.

3:2... That was the ratio of the club members.

"Oh yeah. Gaen-san. I only thought of this afterwards, but do you think it's possible that the living message that Kuchimoto-chan left behind on that flash card was actually the vampire's signature?"

"I'd say it's very possible."

It seemed that it was a possibility that she'd already considered, as she responded to my question in an instant—the initials, huh?

"D/V/S".

"However, there was nothing of the sort in the belongings of either Harimaze Kie-chan here or Honnou Aburi-chan in the next room. Of course, there were no living messages either. But if the 'B777Q' on the flash card is actually a signature, it would make more sense if a similar code was left with every mummy."

That was true... But for her to have already verified that—did this person really take a nap while I was gone?

"In Kuchimoto-chan's case, instead of being on a public street or in a private house, she was in an abandoned shack. Maybe the vampire felt that they could work leisurely without worrying about being seen?"

As I said that, I couldn't help but feel uneasy.

Without worrying about being seen? Work leisurely?

A vampire worrying about being seen sounded like some sort of slapstick comedy... In that case, it would make more sense that they had left a code behind with the mummies of Harimaze-chan and Honnou-chan, a code that didn't seem like a code.

"There are a couple more things that don't make sense, Koyomin. If you explain this as a vampire leaving their signature in much the same way an artist signs their name on a work of art, it's pretty hair-raising and very appropriate for an oddity story—but in that case, don't you think they would have added it to a work that they'd be more proud of?"

At least, they wouldn't be doing it on a failure... —said Gaen-san, looking up from the register and towards the mummy on the bed.

I see.

As an ordinary person, my thoughts came to a standstill when I lay my eyes upon such a gruesome mummy, but in the end, a mummy like this was something that had "failed" to become a vampire—no matter how much they longed to be in the limelight, there was surely no artist that would sign their name on a failed work.

Then, should I simply assume that it was just a living message left behind by Kuchimoto-chan?

"I did do a handwriting analysis. I compared the writing in red pen on the flash card with the writing in her notebook that I found in her bag—however, I couldn't come to a definite conclusion. There didn't seem to be any matches in the handwriting, but if they were scribbling it down while being attacked by a vampire, it would make sense for it to be messy."

"That's true... Well, in the end, whether it's a living message or a signature, it doesn't really matter."

"Although, from our perspective as the pursuers, a vampire that longs to be in the limelight is much easier to find, so that would be helpful. But anyway, as the commander, I'd like to give you a command to follow, Koyomin."

"Ah. Yes. What is it?"

The sun was about to set. Time was running out.

We were entering the world of the night.

It seemed that, after the reconnaissance and discussion, it was finally time to come up with a practical response to this oddity phenomenon—thanks to talking with Kanbaru and Higasa-chan, my motivation to solve the case had increased as much as my mood had decreased, but now, what did I need to do?

"I was really unsure about whether or not I should ask this of you... But it seems I'll have to after all. Koyomin. This is only something you can do."

Gaen-san spoke with a serious expression.

"I'd like you to hold Shinobu-chan back for tonight."

[horansqueenandpaynesqueen]

Next-Door Neighbours : Chapter Fifteen

A Liam Fanfic, A Niall Fanfic, MA Rating

New neighbours, new drama. Sometimes what you need is the last thing you’re looking for.

CHAPTER 1 || CHAPTER 2 || CHAPTER 3 || CHAPTER 4 || CHAPTER 5 || CHAPTER 6 || CHAPTER 7 || CHAPTER 8 || CHAPTER 9 || CHAPTER 10 || CHAPTER 11 || CHAPTER 12 || CHAPTER 13 || CHAPTER 14 || 

+NOTES+

1- This fic is written by Julie ( @paynesqueen​ ) & Livia ( @horansqueen​ ) 2- Julie will write the odd chapters and Livia the even chapters 3- This fic will have romance, drama and smut.

Chapter Fifteen by Julie (paynesqueen)

Julie sat on the stool as she watched Liam finally making them breakfast. It was nearly three in the afternoon though, but she was craving eggs and bacon ever since he mentioned he was going to cook something for them earlier. After the shower, they were heading to grab something to eat, but one kiss was all it took and they were back in bed. It had been a while since she had felt such need to touch and be touched by someone as much. She would lie if she said it wasn’t scaring her, but she wanted to go over her own fears and just enjoy what she and Liam were sharing.

He was only wearing briefs and she was really enjoying the view of his backside.

“I feel bad for not helping. Are you sure I can’t help with anything?”

“You just sit your cute butt on that stool and let me cook you breakfast.” He answered not even turning around to face her.

“I just feel useless right now.” She admitted. “Not that I’m any good in the kitchen, but I usually help around at least.”

“You are not useless. Dressed like that, you motivate me to make these faster so I can undress you once again you are done eating.” He argued as he continued to fill our plates with all the goodies

“Bold of you to assume that you just have to make me breakfast to get me naked.”

“No, I also count on my irresistible charm.” He grinned putting my plate in front of me. “Enjoy!”

“Thank you.” She took the first bite and softly moaned; “Okay, this is so good.”

“Keep making those noises and we’re going straight back to bed.”

She chuckled before taking another huge bite; “We have all the time to do this. If we’re always naked, I feel like it defeats the purpose of the point you have been working for.”

“And what point is that exactly?”

“That we should be dating. I’m all for the sex and all, but if you want us to be an actual couple, you need to show me something else than your incredible skills in bed.”

She saw the grin as he pulled her towards him; “Incredible huh? I’m glad to hear that.”

“Of course that’s all you heard in all of it.” She shook her head.

“It’s not all I heard honest but since neither of us is dressed to go out and frankly, I would prefer to keep you to myself for a few more days, what would you like to do?”

“Get to know each other better? Watch a movie all cuddled up on your couch. There are many options to choose from.” She exclaimed.

“Okay then why not ask the questions we have yet to answer about our past relationship or hookups?” Liam offered.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to get on those on the very day we started ours?”

“Technically, we are on the second day.” He argued.

“Smartass.”

He chuckled softly; “But really, it’s a good thing to get out of the way, don’t you think? Plus we already covered our families, childhood and anything in-between while we were forced by you to not act on our mutual attraction. Come on, it won’t be that bad. I can even start. Ask away.”

“Fine.” She finally agreed. “With how many girls have you slept besides me?”

“Five. Two of them were random hook-ups and the other three were relationships. Now you.”

“You had random hook-ups?”She laughed. “Sorry, I just wasn’t expecting that from you.”

“I’m more of a relationship kind of guy is true, but in-between girlfriends, a guy has needs and sometimes one night stands can be good.” He replied. “Now stop stalling and tell me your score.”

“The truth is I don’t really know. I mean, I can tell you for sure four were from serious relationships, but my hook-ups, I don’t know. I can tell you that I’m in the double digits.”

“Double-digits is way too vague, Miss Cooper.”

“Fine, I guess it’s about 20 something.” She sighed pulling away. “Happy now?”

He pulled her back towards him; “I don’t care about how many guys you have slept with.”

“Is that true or are you going to bring that back to my face when we have our first fight?” She asked getting up. “Because let’s face it; we all care about who slept with who before us and saying that you don’t care implies that you are either lying and planning on using it at a later time or you simply don’t care about me as a whole. I may not be a relationship expert, but I’m not stupid.”

Okay, she might have been reaching; actually she knew for a fact that she was and she didn’t know where the need to start a fight came from. Truthfully, she knew where it came from. A fear from repeating past mistakes she was always scared that she was destined to redo.

She was about to apologize for her stupid and unnecessary outburst because she wanted this fight to be done and hopefully not to have to go deeper into that fear that has been driven her to forgo relationships when he got up at his turn.

“Okay, that’s far fetching don’t you think? I don’t care in the sense is that you don’t sleep with them anymore. You are with me so no, I don’t care if you slept with one, three or a million guys. Now if you asked me if I was jealous? That’s a totally different answer.”

“How’s that different?” She asked.

“Well, I don’t define our relationship based on how many people we have slept with in the past so that’s why I don’t care. But I am jealous of the guys who got to have you first. I’m jealous of the four guys that got a part of your heart before me and I’m also jealous of Louis.”

“Louis? Why?”

“He wasn’t your boyfriend, but he is your best friend with whom you slept for over six years. He means more to you than those other one-night stands.” He admitted. “And he’s still a big part of your life today. It’s always going to be hard not to get scared sometimes.”

She got closer to him and slithered her arms around his neck before kissing his lips softly. She had never truly believed that Liam would see Louis as competition. Especially knowing just how much Louis was head over heels for her sister.

“Liam, you’re the first guy who broke down all of my barriers. No, you didn’t only break them down; you fired up dynamite, threw it at them and they were fucking pulverised.” She admitted. “Honestly, if something was meant to happen with Louis, it would have already happened. Yes, Louis is a part of me because he’s not only my best friend; he’s been my anchor. He’s the first guy who saw through my bullshit, but it didn’t matter because it was never like this for us. We didn’t have that need to be a couple because we were never in love and never even got close to it. I can’t say he’s like a brother because that would be weird, but in some shape or form, I guess that’s what he came to be once we stopped sleeping together and he finally admitted to being in love with my sister.”

“The rational part of me knows it, but the fear is still there and if you ask me, my fear is far less far fetching than yours.”

“I know, Liam, and I am sorry to have gotten mad over this.” She sighed; “But you have to understand that as much as I want us to work, I have not overcome every little reason that stopped me from being in a relationship. I can’t promise that I won’t flip out from time to time, but I’ll try my best to not let this fear control me. Just know that it might take some time to get there.”

He kissed her at his turn making the butterflies in her stomach stir crazy. That man had a way to get her out of her comfort zone and he was probably not even aware of it.

“You’re worth it.”

“Yeah? Come back to me in a few weeks to see if you still believe that.” She chuckled.

“So we’re going to stop being stupid and try to just enjoy what we have?”

“Deal.” She smiled and he couldn’t help but think just how prettier she was whenever she smiled. He had no problem admitting it was corny, but he couldn’t help seeing it. He lowered his head towards her and kissed her forehead.

“Okay, let’s finish our breakfast or lunch or whatever you want to call it and we’ll go watch a movie all cuddled up on the couch.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

+++

After they ate and cleaned up the kitchen, they made their way to living room. As she sat down, he tried to choose the movie they were going to watch.

“How about Lord of the rings? It’s been a while since I watched it.”

“Sounds good to me. I love this movie and Orlando Bloom looks so good in it.”

“Oh yeah... Sometimes that’s all I can think about.”

She laughed softly; “Idiot. Just put it in.”

He looked up, a smirk on his face, as she rolled her eyes; “Get your mind out of the gutter, Payno.”

“Not my fault, you bring out that side of me.”

He looked at her and couldn’t help but to think about how much he wished he could make her forget about the movie. She was wearing his shirt and only that. Knowing she was naked underneath it was no helping to stop his imagination. Alas he promised her a movie night and he was going to deliver it. After he started the movie, he sat down next to her and simply pulled her to him and stretched his arm over her shoulders as her arm settled over his stomach.

About 30 minutes into the movie, he looked down at her just as she looked up and she leaned over to kiss him. He was more than happy to give in to her demand. She pulled away to grab the remote and pause the movie before kissing him again.

The kiss deepened and she quickly straddled him, their mouths connecting again. She knew that she was the one who asked to something else than sex, but she suddenly needed to feel him inside of her. She found herself grinding on him needing to quench her need.

“I thought we were supposed to watch a movie.” He said in-between kisses as his fingers wrapped themselves at the hem of her shirt before pulling it over her head.

“Changed my mind, but if you don’t shut up, I might change it back.”

“Wouldn’t dream about it.” He assured her.

She gasped when his lips found her nipple and sucked on it. She grabbed onto his hair as she kept on grinding over his thighs.

“God, you’re driving me crazy.” He said just before latching onto her other breast.

She loved how skilled he was with his mouth. The simple thought of where it was earlier in the afternoon got her so close to her release. His hands grabbed her bottoms and helped with the pace of her grinding.

“Oh f-” She came faster than she anticipated when they started this, but she was far from being done. She still needed him inside of her.

One of her hands came between them and reached inside his briefs. She stroked his hard member and he groaned against her breast.

“Fuck, I need to be inside of you. Not about to cum this way.”

Lifting her slightly, they succeeded to get rid of the piece of clothing that was complicating things and with no need to ask, his dick filled her. She moaned as she stretched around it, letting it sink further each time. As she was going up and down on him, his tongue licked every part of her skin it could find giving her more shivers than she thought she could handle. She could feel him so deep into her as he thrusted his hips upwards in fluid strokes. She was so damn close and she tried to take control of their pacing to accelerate her release.

“Fuck this.” He let out.

She didn’t get to ask what it was about before he lifted them from the couch and found themselves onto the floor, him over her.

“What the-”

He shut her up crashing his mouth on hers and he fastened his pace as he pound into her. She wanted to be annoyed that he took the control from her, but as he went deep and hard into her, she couldn’t think straight.

It didn’t take long after that to feel the waves of her orgasm build up and for a rare time of her life, she was pretty sure their neighbours heard her cuming. He followed not long after and as they try to regain their breath, he stood still over her, supported by his forearms.

“Why the change of position? Didn’t like not having control?” She asked him as she played with the strand of hair that was falling over his eye.

“Not the reason why.”

He looked kind of sheepish before he went on; “I just needed you closer. When you’re under me, I feel we make one.”

She wasn’t sure if he was actually being truthful or if he was joking, but she decided not to push it further; she liked to think that he meant it.

She pulled him closer and kissed him softly; “That’s kind of sweet, but now I’m going to have carpet burn on my ass because of that.”

“Sorry about that.” He laughed. “Tell you what, let’s head to the bedroom and to make you forgive me, I’m going to massage that sweet arse of yours.”

“Yeah like that’s not a code for getting laid again.”

“Do you really have something against me making you shudder with pleasure over and over again?”

He got on his knees and pulled her with him finding herself straddling him again. Her arms wrapped around his neck as he tried to get them up without breaking contact. It seemed easier said than done though and on his third attempt, she finally couldn’t hold her laughter in.

“Okay, I think we have established you have not mastered that ability.”

His annoyance was palpable and she pecked his lips before getting off him so he could get up. Once they were both up on their feet, Liam quickly lifted over his shoulder. She shrieked as he hustled her towards his bedroom.

“Put me down you caveman.”

He ignored her plea and smacked her bottoms just for good measure. She yelped in surprise when he threw her onto the bed and climbed over her.

“That doesn’t sound like I’m about to get a massage.”

“You’ll get one...” He lingered on the words. “But with you being naked on my bed, it’s giving me tons of other ideas.”

“So much for doing other stuff than sex tonight.” She laughed.

“You started it.” He reminded her.

“I know. I know.” He groaned. “I guess you’re kind of irresistible.”

“Don’t worry, love. We will do other things. We have all the time in the world to do them.” He promised her.

She smiled at him and leaned over for a kiss before he busied himself to make her cum once more.

[scrawler-jay]

of mice and artblock

So, midterms happened and I abandoned this blog for a while. But now I’m back, and I come bearing mice.

*

I’ve been really struggling with finding subjects I like to draw. I’m happy to work on skeleton studies until Judgment Day to better understand anatomy, but I know I need to balance “homework” art with “for fun” art, or else risk losing motivation for learning to draw -- and I’m so used to writing fiction at this point that no subject really appeals to me artistically unless it’s got 5,000+ words of story attached (or at least some narrative/character ideas, yanno -- something for my brain to pick at). The obvious solution is to draw concept art and characters from my written stories, but I feel really intimidated by that because I’m such a beginner artist that nothing I create now will do justice to the vision I have in my head.

I need art OCs and concepts – things that I will only draw art of, and have never written a story about. Stuff that doesn’t have to match a previously established, written story, and that I can change as I learn more and my skills improve.

I ended up drawing a bunch of mice.

This was initially just a whim. Human anatomy requires a lot of skill to pull off, especially faces and hands, but mice felt more beginner-friendly to me. Admittedly, I was going for a more cartoony style as opposed to photorealism, so if you’re looking at this from a realism perspective then these are pretty poor mice. However, I don’t feel ashamed of them, which I am taking as a good sign.

I kept drawing one mouse over and over. I ended up calling him Leo just because it was funny – “leo” refers to lions, but here Leo is just a little mouse. But of course, giving him a name (and a gender, incidentally) is the start of a story. Via a flight of fancy, I got it into my head that I wanted to do a painting of Leo trying to catch a big snowflake. I made some thumbnails of what I wanted the scene to look like, and then cut out a roughly 7 inch x 7 inch piece of watercolor paper from a big sheet that I had under my bed, sketched the scene in pencil, and then finished with watercolor pencils (and a white gel pen for the snowflakes). The process probably took 2.5 to 3 hours.

So, now the lore is that Leo is a mouse living in a little house in an old tree at the edge of the woods, and he wears a red scarf. I did not like this painting. It seemed over-saturated and the colors didn’t quite work the way I wanted them to. I ended up watching a tutorial on color theory, and decided to redo the painting using my newfound knowledge of color schemes. I used this color palette tool to get an idea of what kinds of colors would look good together, and settled on a complementary scheme with bluish green and brownish red.

And then, everything went wrong.

I tried to redo the painting, still working traditionally. I rushed the sketch because I was so eager to get right into working with color. This time, to avoid over-saturation, I used watercolors out of a pan rather than in pencil form. Mixing the colors in the lid of the pan took a really long time because I was so picky about shades, and because I continued rushing I didn’t allow the layers enough time to dry. Leo’s scarf (now green instead of red) bled into his russet fur, and the mailbox was the wrong shape, and I tried to erase a pencil line and created a dark blotch over an area that was supposed to be white with snow – and then I gave up.

I had downloaded Krita, a piece of digital drawing/painting software, a while ago, but hadn’t had any success using it because my desk isn’t big enough to accommodate both a laptop and my small tablet. Using my lap to hold the tablet was an exercise in frustration, and I knew so little about how digital art works that I just felt really overwhelmed and lost whenever I opened the program.

However, Krita (like most digital art software) has an undo button that I find very alluring, so I decided to try it again, now on a shiny new desk from Ikea that is actually big enough to support tablet and laptop together. I think just the space on the desk really made all the difference, but also I was determined to get this artwork of a mouse to a place where I felt satisfied with it.

I spent a solid 5 hours working on what ended up being a very simple colored drawing of a mouse catching a snowflake outside his little house. I barely blended anything at all, and there’s no light source that required me to shade anything – it’s just flat color. However, I really like these colors, and I think I did well (for an absolute beginner). I want to go back and add textures/shading to give an impression of depth, but I'm not sure how.

Leo – like all of my figures – feels really stiff, so I also want to work on gestures/studies of mice doing things. And, thanks to the popularity of mice as lab animals and pets, there are way more reference photos of mice than I expected! Most refs depict the house mouse, Mus musculus, but I did find the work of a wildlife photographer named Dean Mason who spent 15 years photographing harvest mice (micromys minutus).

Unfortunately, all of the prior artwork in this post I had drawn almost purely from imagination, and I think it shows. I studied two mice from photos in pencil, then erased the lines until they were barely visible and tried to do the fur texture in ink (with a dip pen, so there is some unevenness when the pen was extra inky).

Left is my first attempt doing the fur texture. I was more cautious with layering pen strokes, so you can see the lines of strokes fairly evenly. Right is my 2nd attempt, where I was bolder with the pen. I like these mice more than the one I created in the digital painting; these ones (especially the right) feel more Beatrix Potter-ish, which is a vibe I like.

Do I want to go back and fix the anatomy in my digital art of Leo? Yes. I also want to take another stab at doing this piece traditionally, but this time, I'd go monochrome and try to do everything in brown. However, part of me is exhausted from drawing ten million snowflakes and does not want to relive that experience with a gel pen -- I've already done it once with a tablet pen, and that was enough.

I have a hazy, far-off goal of creating a comic of Leo having adventures with another mousy friend, but that’s so far in the future that it’s not worth spending time considering right now. In the nearer future, however, Leo’s friend might become a reality – I know he’s an albino mouse (name TBD) who either escaped from a drug-testing facility (I loved The Secret of NIMH movie as a kid) or else is a pet who was dumped into the wild by a human owner who no longer wanted him. Leo is outgoing and adventurous, and this friend is shy and cautious.

[tlbodine]

How to Love Revision

A lot of you lovely folks are doing Nanowrimo right now. 

Which means that, in a few weeks, you will have a steaming pile of pages. A rough draft. A word-baby, if you will. And you might, at some point, want to turn that messy jumble into a real book, perhaps something to send to a publisher or publish yourself or just share with people. 

I see a lot of writing advice about finishing first drafts -- and a whole lot of it is in the vein of “Just write it! Fix it in post! Finished is better than perfect!” which is great advice for pushing through, but does tend to leave future-you -- the editor you-- with problems. 

Lucky for you, I happen to love editing (really! it’s my favorite part!) so I am here to give you some advice on how to turn those pages into a proper story without ripping all of your hair out or screaming into the void (but if you need to scream, it’s OK, I won’t judge you.) 

First Off: Credit Where It’s Due 

My current revision process draws heavily from Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Revision technique: https://hollylisle.com/one-pass-manuscript-revision-from-first-draft-to-last-in-one-cycle/

Her writing guides are golden, and I heartily recommend reading them all, starting with that one up there. 

I don’t do one-pass revisions, but her ethos really helped me. Before I found her advice, I would get caught in the endless revise/rewrite cycle. I was going through 9+ drafts of every story and it kept morphing into something new and sprouting new problems, hydra-style, every time I tried to redo it. So nothing was ever finished, nothing was ever satisfying, and I hated it. 

So I found a better way! And it freed me! I’ve written six books since then, four of them published (one Wattpad-exclusive) and I learned to look forward to the second draft. 

So how does this magic work? Let me show you! 

Step One: Put the Damn Thing Away 

Editing requires intellectual and emotional distance. So finish your story, and set it aside for a while. Stop thinking about it. Actively put it out of your mind. Work on something else for a while. Read a book. Catch up on all the TV you missed. Whatever. The point is -- you don’t want to come back to revise your story until you can look at it with fresh eyes. 

How long this will take depends on you, of course. It’s a very personal thing. It could be weeks. It could be months. For me, a good guideline is to wait until I can no longer quote whole passages from memory. 

Now then. Let’s do some triage. 

Before you can start editing, you need to know your goals. If you’re a planner, this might be easy because you have an outline you can compare against. If you’re a discovery writer like me, well, this is the time to figure out what exactly it is that you discovered. Grab a notebook (or a notepad file, if you’re a digital native) and follow this process: 

Write a one-sentence elevator pitch that roughly encapsulates the concept of the story. It doesn’t have to be pretty -- you’re not showing this to anyone but yourself -- but it does have to be honest. My one-sentence pitch for River of Souls was “Self-aware zombies struggle for equal rights, but the medication they rely on to retain their humanity doesn’t work as advertised.” My pitch for The Hound was “Lesbian thrift shop owners invite the devil into their home after buying a cursed taxidermied dog.” 

Write down your theme(s). In the draft, themes might take the form of questions. In this draft, you’ll want some answers. What do you want the reader to feel when they’re done? What is the message you’re trying to tell? When I wrote Nezumi’s Children, I knew it was a story about religion -- “What should we put our faith into?” In the end, I decided the answer was, “We should put our faith in each other.” That dictated the ending. (I also wanted to be careful not to inadvertently support abandoning your pets -- so I couldn’t let the rats be happily feral at the end. A happy ending for them meant being owned and cared for). 

Write a 250-word synopsis of the story. Again, it doesn’t have to be pretty. It just has to introduce the characters, the world, and the general shape of the story arc -- the inciting incident, the escalating stakes, and how the character changed at the end. 

You may find that you struggle with this part, and that is totally find (and honestly to be expected). You may discover, for example, that your character doesn’t actually change, or that there isn’t a core conflict. That’s okay! That’s what you’re here to fix! I have absolutely, definitely written a book and then discovered 80,000 words later that it didn’t have a plot. It’s OK though, because you’ll fix that problem in the next step. 

If you do indeed have a plot and escalating stakes and characters who go through developmental arcs, you’re ahead of the game. Now you’ve got the skeleton of an elevator pitch and the makings of a query letter (or a jacket blurb). 

Next: Map Out Everything 

When I was in elementary school, I had to start writing my first essays. I was supposed to make an outline, then write the paper to follow the outline. I wasn’t very good at doing it that way, so instead I would write the paper, then hastily draw up the outline to match what I said. Oops. Nothing has changed, honestly. 

With your trusty notebook (or blank text document), compile the following: 

Write out a list of scenes. Just a couple words describing the events of what happens. Now - are all of those scenes necessary? Are any redundant? Do you need to add foreshadowing or establish something earlier in the story to make sense of it? Are the scenes in the wrong order? Does every scene do some work to advance the plot, deepen the character, flesh out the world? Does the ending resonate with the theme? Re-write the scene list in the correct order, with scenes added or removed as necessary to tell the proper story. Now your scene list is a handy dandy roadmap/outline for your revision! 

List out all of the characters in the story. Write down their role in the story. Does every major character have a goal? Do motivations make sense? Does each one change in some way during the story? Are all of your walk-on roles necessary? Are there characters who don’t really do much, and could you combine them?

Fixing plot holes on your scene list is a lot easier than fixing them in the manuscript itself. Keep tweaking your scenes until the story feels like it works. Make sure there’s a logical flow between events -- cause and effect, escalating stakes. Consult structure guides like the Hero’s Journey or the Three-Act Structure if you need some help with your plot. 

Here’s a part that’s really important so it’s going in all caps: THE SCENE LIST IS FINAL. Make all the adjustments you need to the plot while you do the scene list, but do not -- DO NOT -- deviate from the story once you move on to the next step. You don’t stop modifying your scene list until you’re happy with the story, and once you’re happy, THAT is the story you’re writing. Get new ideas for things that can happen? Great, save ‘em for the next book. 

Now Roll Your Sleeves Up And Get Dirty 

Some people like to print their manuscript off and do edits in pen, but I don’t have reliable printer access most of the time and hate wasting paper. So instead, I pull up the rough draft and adjust it so it takes up one half of my monitor. Then I pull up a fresh, empty file and put that on the other half of the screen. 

Now, using my scene list as a guide, I pull up the rough draft and rewrite it, scene by scene. Yes, that means re-typing every word. You’ll find that when you do this, you’ll fix a lot of language mistakes without even realizing it. I’m an under-writer, so my drafts usually double in length during this process because I spend more time lingering on sensory details, adding scenes, teasing out character dynamics, etc. etc. etc. Just let yourself go, get immersed into the scene. If you forget what you were doing, just refer back to your outline and original draft to get back on track. 

I find this process works best if you can do it quickly. Try not to let the story get cold. Ideally, work on this every single day, or even set aside a long weekend to just hammer it all out. 

Finally: Make a Second Pass 

Now that you’ve got a second draft under your belt, it’s time to celebrate! Set the book aside. If you have beta readers or an editor, now is the time to send this to them. Hang out for a bit. Figure out who you’re querying, if you’re doing that. Find a kick-ass cover, if you’re self-publishing. Build yourself a Lego mansion. Whatever. Just sit on your draft for a little bit. 

Now that a couple weeks have passed, it’s time to make a final pass. Gather all of the feedback you’ve gotten from beta readers and editors and decide what advice you should take and what you can ignore. Here’s a guideline: If someone says something and you think, “oh, yeah! that’s exactly it!” then you take the suggestion. If they say something and you think “uh, well, no, that’s not really the story I was trying to write....” or something similar, you can ignore the feedback. Good feedback will always feel true in the “duh, why didn’t I think of that” way. 

Open up your new draft and, starting at page one, just read the damn thing. Make adjustments to the writing as necessary: 

Correct any misspellings and typos you come across. 

Eliminate weak words and phrases and replace them with stronger ones. 

Add some variation to sentence structure if you notice that it’s become repetitive. 

Eliminate redundancy. Fix your metaphors. Fix your symbolism. Keep your poetic language on-theme. In The Hound, I replaced a ton of random metaphors with dog imagery. It’s subtle, but it lends thematic cohesion. 

Some people use things like Grammarly or Hemmingway App to help with this. I’ve never used them, so I can’t speak to their effectiveness. But if you find that they help, awesome! Use them! 

Here’s a really important point: This step can ONLY come AFTER the rewriting stage. There is no point at all in tweaking sentences and fixing up the language in a story that has no plot. Fix your structural issues FIRST, and be sure they are AIR TIGHT, before you start dicking around with the words. Ok? Ok. (Someone go back in time 15 years and tell this to young me please) 

And now...you are done! 

Spend some time tweaking your elevator pitch and query letter at this point, if necessary. But no matter what, you do not go back into this document and change ANYTHING unless an editor tells you to. The book is DONE. Maybe give it a final proofread before you self-publish it (but honestly, you’re better off hiring someone to do it at that point, you’re going to be too zorched to notice the typos you missed) but otherwise don’t touch it. Don’t think about it. Write the next book. 

And that’s it! That’s my mostly painless revision process! 

Obviously every person is different, your mileage may vary, etc. But I hope this serves as a helpful jumping off point. I am more than happy to answer any questions or provide clarification on things -- just drop me a line :) 

[echobearclasspectingblog]

Hey, would a 12-kid session be too much to analyze? If not, then maybe you could predict a one with these 12 could play out? Witch of Time, Heir Of Space, Maid Of Void, Sylph of Life, Knight Of Doom, Page Of Mind, Bard Of Breath, Prince Of Blood, Mage of Light, Seer Of Rage, Rouge of Hope, and Thief Of Heart. Thanks in advance! -Anon

Sweet, my first 12/all central classes and aspects session request! Hey Anon (which is a valid ‘kid’ name for homestuck btw), a 12 kid session is the kind of challenge I’ve been looking forward to. I won’t know if it’ll be too much until I do it so let’s get into this! I’ll try to do this with the same style as the others, but it’ll be quite a long response just from the sheer number of players.

((I wrote some of this intro stuff before getting into it, and it is quite a large thing to respond to. Part way through I realized I couldn’t respond to double digit sburb sessions the same way as smaller sessions if I wanted to respond at a good pace for all my ask box, so in the interest of that I’ll be summarizing the synergies into the most important good/bads instead of listing all of them. I’ll also add that to my blog’s description for future reference.))

Witch of Time - One who makes changes to Time or changes things through Time

Heir of Space - One who causes Space to change or causes things to change through Space

Maid of Void - One who encourages creation of Void or encourages creation using Void

Sylph of Life - One who creates Life  or creates things using Life

Knight of Doom - One who serves Doom or serves using Doom

Page of Mind - One who gathers service for Mind or gathers service using Mind

Bard of Breath - One who allows Breath to be destroyed or allows destruction through Breath

Prince of Blood - One who destroys Blood or destroys using Blood

Mage of Light - One who Knows Light or knows through Light through experience

Seer of Rage - One who knows Rage or knows through Rage through research

Rogue of Hope - One who takes Hope or takes using Hope for others

Thief of Heart - One who takes Heart or takes with Heart for themselves

You have a space player, required to breed the genesis frog. You have a time player, required to scratch the session. You’ve got all the canon aspects here, and most of the classes (no lords, muses, and the questionable demi-canon waste) so it’s basically a big session. Space and Time are change classes which could lead to some interesting shenanigans, the Bard of Breath also jumps out at me for some reason. This mix of 12 don’t seem too overpowered or disastrous from first glance.

That’s quite a long list, and now we get to the meat of the session analysis! I’ll first dedicate some thoughts to each player’s strengths and weaknesses individually in a sburb session. Then I’ll look at how the classpects interact with each other, doing my best to summarize the best and worst synergies for each player based on their classpect.

A witch of time changes events, history, and the future. This witch is a great player for changing the past to undo doomed timelines, preventing them before they happen, or even just fixing minor mistakes. If they become strong enough they could even change the alpha timeline’s future. Being able to redo the past so often could lead to existential issues of lacking agency, and if overdone could even lead to not learning from your mistakes and just running into them again waiting for the witch to fix things.

An heir of space causes change to creation, distance, and physical space. They’d be able to create different outcomes for alchemization, giving more options. Being able to cause changes to the planets would also be good for helping other people with their planet quests. Their aspect lines up with their duties and through the genesis frog they could end up making drastic changes to paradox space. On the other hand, they could end up making DRASTIC changes to paradox space through the main goal of a sburb session which if gone wrong is exactly how you end up with ultimate big bads.

A maid of void encourages creation of secrecy, emptiness, and mystery. They’ll encourage using secret plans to make it harder for the dersites to stop you. Consorts will build secret bases hidden from your enemies. Too many secret plans can cause players to end up not knowing what everyone else is doing and getting in each other’s way from lack of communication.

A sylph of life creates wealth, health, and living situations. Giving life to lifeless things means building up an army of living stuff like toys, action figures and statues. Making plenty of healing items. You could have some confusing or awkward times if they end up making too many living versions of each player at a time.

A knight of doom serves hardship, fate, and death. Misfortune is a sword they can wield against their enemies. They can serve their fellow players with the very doom that would otherwise only be a problem without this knight. Serving doom itself is a side of the knight that’ll lead to more dead players and more doomed timelines.

A page of mind gathers service of logic, decisions, and law. Every court in paradox space will be in your pocket with the page by your side. They’ll find some smart people to help you out as well. But it’s entirely possible that the page will be personally very indecisive and need people’s help making choices.

A bard of breath allows destruction of flow, flexibility, and wind. They’ll help make sure the enemy loses freedom over time. Causing tornadoes is a great late game attack too. As well as halting people’s breathing. If your party loses too much flexibility from the bard’s influence you may end up railroaded on a non-optimal version of the alpha timeline.

A prince of blood destroys connections, bonds, and important liquids that keep us alive. This prince will sever important ties between your enemies. No alliance is safe from them. Probably has some sort of sweet blood weapon too. Naturally adverse to friendship and connecting with others, and prince is already a class that needs support from others to keep from going completely off the rails.

A mage of light knows fortune, attention, and brightness. They’ll be the first one to know what’s important in the session and why it’s important. Also hunting down sweet loot and is probably a living treasure map to some degree. Mages tend to experience their aspect directly so maybe try to keep them from flying into the sun or something.

A seer of rage knows anger, chaos, and harsh truths. Will know when and how rage is best used. Is able to see through the confusion of volatile emotions. Needs tons of mental health support due to constantly learning enraging things and dealing with the angry side of society.

A rogue of hope takes imagination, belief, and angels for others. Your enemy’s hopes of winning a fight are now your hopes for winning that fight. Gives you something to believe in, though it’s a stolen belief. Stealing angels and gods may end up backfiring.

A thief of heart takes romance, souls, and motivation. Removes even the peskiest of souls from a body. Uses people’s feelings to steal from them. Beware, they’re probably the type to hit on your significant other. Also possibly has a collection of actual hearts in jars? That’d be messed up but cool.

The heir of space and witch of time combo is just asking for the fabric of reality to shift in grand unknowable ways. The sylph of life would give the witch plenty to change the flow of time with, both in new lives and in healing, I’d call this a good synergy. A bad combination pops up with the bard who’d limit the witch’s change of time, or worse only allow the destructive outcomes of the changes. The prince of blood helps the witch detach from their connection to other people, allowing them to make decisions on how to reshape time more on what’s logically best and not get caught up in feelings. The thief of heart’s drain of emotions could be a bit dangerous to the witch considering the prince’s interaction, pushing the witch to be a very coldhearted time magician with no ties to anyone. The redundancy of the thief and prince makes otherwise positive interactions become dangerous, so only one of the two should spend too long with the witch at a time.

To help the space player, the knight of doom will probably be the main one offering to help. Making sure the frogs have a fated doom/death in the future so that paradox cloning goes perfectly, a good knight for the heir who might have troubles with their duties due to the passive changing of space. Having the mage of light as a third helper would be even more of a boost, using their experience with luck to find the right frogs. Keep the maid of void and bard of breath away though as they both would do more harm than good, same with the prince of blood depending on how close the aspect of blood relates to ecto-biology. Your rogue might end up really useful once they learn how to steal imaginary frogs right out of people’s heads.

The maid’s best creation buddy would probably be the knight of doom, inspiring them to create things that fall into the decent overlap of the doom and void aspects. The bard of breath would be all too happy to allow nothingness to be created in the place of oxygen… which could be devastating come to think of it. Just by the nature of their classpects, the maid will be a very bad mix for the seer and the mage, not just because of their classes but because the aspects also directly conflict with void, light being opposite in many ways to void and rage for typically trying to see through lies and secrets which void has a hand in the second one enough for the seer to just lose their mind.

While they might not get along the knight of doom will keep the sylph’s life creation in check so that there isn’t ever too much life, keeping a balance. Meanwhile the prince of blood will keep the sylph from getting too attached to her creations. The maid of void’s influence could cause the sylph to start creating secret double lives for them self and others, which could have some benefit but easily lead to trouble and conflict between the players. The thief might also take the abundance of the sylph’s creations for granted and siphon off souls and such from their armies.

On the flip side of things, the sylph can bring more life into the knight’s life where they might be lacking because of the knight’s service to and using doom. The page may be able to bring out smarter thinking and logic out of the knight. The rogue of hope seems like a natural clashing classpect to the knight of doom, one giving out unrealistic hopes while the other helps people with hard reality and consequences. Better hope the rogue and knight roleplay into some classpects that get along better than their true ones.

Mage of light is a good classpect to pair up with the page of mind, as mages generally dive into their aspects and the light and mind overlap of knowledge means they’ll get to share plenty. The page’s development will benefit from this connection and probably be a very well off in learning to use their classpect to the fullest. While rage also has some knowledge based overlap, the seer of rage would be a bad person to try and help since the aspect is still disruptive to mind aspect and clashes in the order-chaos side of things, the page will have enough problems as it is. The maid of void and thief of heart are both the other main negative influences on the page, obscuring things and taking away their individuality.

The bard of breath could easily use the page of mind to enforce stricter laws and logic to break down freedom in the session. The thief of heart’s stealing of individuality would also be another tangent close to freedom eroding the bard could easily amplify. The biggest conflict I see happening with the bard would be the prince of blood, as one fights excessive freedom and the other fights excessive connections. This could make for some really ugly fights.

Your session’s thief could steal the individuality from the prince of blood, making them more reliant on the group rather than themselves to balance out their typically anti-social behavior. The maid of void on the other hand would empower the prince to use secrets to toxically tear apart friendships in the session.

The sylph of life’s creation of fortune would give the mage of light plenty of their aspect to experience, maybe even using some of the extra to gamble and experience the luck side of light. The maid’s void will make the mage’s job and use of classpect much harder, probably a good idea to keep them apart.

The knight of doom can serve the seer of rage well, as giving them the ability to see into doomed timelines allows for a lot of rage to come into vision. The prince’s destruction of friendships also would give the seer insight into things, as well as something to warn people against if the prince goes overboard.

Getting inspired to create void by the maid would help the rogue keep themselves hidden while they do sneaky stealy stuff. Besides the conflict with the Knight of doom like I listed earlier, I could see the bard of breath making the rogue’s job harder by letting options be destroyed, leaving less places to find hope.

All of the doomed alternate selves the knight of doom would/might pull into the alpha timeline gives the thief a buffet of ghosts to steal away for their own purposes. Plus like before, the sylph’s creations add even more for the thief to stash up, between these two you’ll have a very powerful thief of heart. Prince of blood looks like the worst pair up, possibly severing ties between the thief and the souls they’ve collected.

Your players seem like a viable match as far as I can tell. Besides the heir/witch possibly bending all of space time, nothing stands out to me as too excessively strong of a combination, and there doesn’t seem to be any session killing bad clashing between players. The balance of players seems like it’d be about average odds of winning for a group this size.

I believe the genesis frog breeding should be very successful and the sburb session in general has a good chance of being completed. The bard of breath seems like the biggest threat just due to their classpect being an anti-shenanigan type of thing. If that’s under control and you aren’t railroaded down a singular path your session should be capable of finding victory.

I’m not entirely sure how much of the trouble I had going over this session was from it being so large that it’s not practical to completely over analyze the combos like I do with smaller sessions or how much of it is that there’s just not super strong synergies here. Probably a mixture of both. Guess time will tell how viable it’ll be for me to do large session stuff like this but I’m still interested in trying it out.

[themathsstudent]

-.' Advice from a Cambridge student '.-

Hi guys. I don't have many notes to post on here since I've been mainly doing past paper questions. So instead I'm going to share some info about my study technique. This is part 1 of I don't know how many since I've not fully decided on the list of content to cover. Comment some suggestions.

Today I'll talk about how I approach, store and track my past paper questions and how that has changed from GCSE to A level to STEP/MAT to studying maths at Cambridge. This I going to be long, so do skip to the relevant bits.

In the photos is a section of older questions from my spreadsheet. I can't really show any more than that because I don't what to spoil it for people saving newer papers for mocks.

WARNING

these are things I phased in an adapted to me routine over many many years. Not all of it will be relavent for your subject/level of study. If you do decide to make something like this into a study habit, be sure to start simple and build it up. Then it will be much easier to maintain and be much better adapted to you.

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WHY SHOULD I DO PAST PAPERS?

✏️ active recall is much better at helping you memorise

✏️ being able to pick out the relevant information from your brain when you read a question is an important skill you can't learn by reading notes

✏️ revise with different topics mixed together

✏️ practise the actual task you are getting your grade from

✏️ figure out what is actually examined and what was taught just to help tell the story

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HOW DO I PICK PAPERS?

🔎 First find a reliable website (bookmark it) to view or download your past papers

🔎 Leave any specimen + at least 2 years worth of papers to be completed under strict exam conditions closer to the exam.

🔎 Pick a year to start from and work towards more recent papers (you can go back to do older ones if you run out)

🔎 Keep in mind the year that the exam specification might have been last updated (I'll do a post about exam specs in future) when deciding which years' papers to prioritise.

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HOW DO I DO THE PAPERS?

📝 Varies according to the subject, exam style and my overall confidence but, in general, I will start off with an "open book". This really puts the pressure off and makes starting papers earlier in the year much less daunting. Just starting is so important.

📝 Always have a go first and think about the reason you're getting stuck. 

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WHAT MATERIALS DO I USE AND HOW DO I STORE MY PAPERS?

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UNIVERSITY:

📒 Even though I have a tablet, I much prefer to do exam practise on paper. 

📒 Since starting university, I use A4+ lined wire-bound notebooks that are perforated and punched.

📒 I don't use loose leaf paper because I am terrified of losing sheets and do not need to frequently reorder or split them as I do with notes as I rewrite them.

📒 Once I have a few years worth of papers done (takes quite a bit of time in the beginning), I will tear them out of the notebooks and file them by year and subject. Y2/3 for Maths at my university mixes the courses throughout 4 papers.

📒 Start each Q on a new page, in the top space write "year.paper.section.question COURSE - topic". I sometimes also write a short comment here or indicate if I would like to redo the question in future.

📒 Log progress in a spreadsheet (more info below)

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STEP (Cambridge Maths Entrance Exam):

📒 Printed papers into A5 booklets (I didn't have a good laptop at the time so this was the best way to have questions with me at all times

📒 I did the questions on a refill pad, filing every evening

📒 Started new questions on a new page since I rarely ever completed a paper cover to cover in order (you actually only attempt 6/12 or 13 in the exam)

📒 Log progress in a spreadsheet (more info below)  

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MAT (Oxford/Imperial Maths Entrance Exam):

📒 Printed the relevant questions double-sided on A4 since there is space to answer

📒 Listed specific areas/questions of topics I got wrong on a post-it I stuck to the front 

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A level:

📒 Printed as A5 booklets and answered in the space provided since my handwriting is small enough

📒 Listed specific areas/questions of topics I got wrong on a post-it I stuck to the front

📒 Stored papers either spine up in an A5 expanding file or opened them up to A4, punched and filed them in a 2 ring binder.

📒 Log progress in a table for each exam. I made the template in excel and printed them to use as cover sheets in my folder.

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GCSE:

📒 These papers were not very efficient to print (gaps, blank pages, pictures) so I just read the questions from a desktop and answered them in a notebook

📒 Marking and comments in a different colour

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HOW DO I USE EXCEL TO TRACK PAST PAPERS?

📊 Currently I use separate rows for questions because my courses are mixed into 4 exams which questions of only 2 types of length (short in section I, long in II).

📊 Columns for year, paper (1-4), section, question number/code, course, content, type, confidence, comments.

📊 "content" is just a list of topics, keywords, theorems. They're like tags I use to categorise.

📊 "type" such as bookwork (content covered almost word for word in lecture), proof, calculation, counterexample gives me an indication of the type of recall there assessing.

📊 "confidence" is a score/10 I use to decide whether or not to review the question in future or ask a supervisor for help and prioritise the next topics to try questions for. This is the only real way I can track progress since there are no mark schemes. 

📊 "comments" are very important. I try my best to give reasons for not being able to complete a question (e.g clarification needed on q's wording, can't find a counterexample, not sure about conditions of theorem ...) and then later update it with the information that resolved the issue. Even when I'm confident, I try to summarise any new trick or technique used in the question

📊 Last year when questions were not mixed up (only 2 fixed courses per exam) and for STEP I chose to use 1 cell per question (year/paper on the left, question number across the top. In each cell listing the content and manually colour coding. Still very satisfying to see fill up.

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WHY DO I USE DIGITAL SPREADSHEETS?

💻 Secure autosave

💻 Filter/sort by year/course/confidence makes it much easier to see which course needs more work

💻 Find. Search through my content tags to find a relevant question

💻 Conditional colour formatting to draw my attention to questions I struggled with as well as being very satisfying when I can change something from red to green. Motivates me to do questions

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🌈Wow you made it all the way to the end

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you find this helpful.