It was hot.
It was horribly hot.
Even if summer was the season when sunlight turned from nature's blessing into a weapon, wasn't it too much to be this hot from morning already? Was global warming really this severe?
If it was this hot before the sun had even fully risen, then humans would be wiped out within a few years without ever having to fight ghouls.
"Mmnya mmnya..."
"Huh...?"
Waking to the strange sound coming from my chest, I finally understood the source of the heat.
Right in front of me, Eto, who had turned five this year, was sleep-talking while rubbing her cheek against me like a cat that had found catnip. So it was you, huh. But do you not have the sense to feel heat?
Carefully moving her aside so I wouldn't wake her, I stretched and sat up.
Once I escaped Eto's scorching, almost-frying affection, the cool morning breeze wrapped around my sweat-soaked body. Looks like humanity still had some time left before extinction.
With those idle thoughts, I looked around to clear my foggy head.
Quite a few things had changed since I'd been raising Eto as a baby.
Bottles and diapers had been put away once Eto became able to eat on her own and use the bathroom by herself.
As for toys like rattles and teddy bears, they were too full of memories to throw out, so I'd stuffed them into the corner of a closet used for blankets and storage.
That was about all that had disappeared. What had been added instead was a new computer to replace the laptop Eto had broken before, anime CDs popular with children these days, a large guitar case, and beyond that....
I softened the corners of my mouth slightly and spoke.
"...Good morning, Father."
The household altar occupied one side of the room.
There, alongside the memorial tablet bearing my father's name, was a photograph of him smiling brightly.
I opened the refrigerator.
The curry had been finished a few days ago, and it would still be a few more days before payday.
I was wondering if I should make do with simple toast for breakfast when my gaze stopped somewhere.
In the deepest corner of the fridge, not very noticeable among the other leftovers, was some wrapped "meat."
Seeing how little was left, my eyes narrowed before I even realized it.
"...Looks like I'll have to go 'procure' some more soon."
"What are you going to do?"
"No, I mean I'm going grocery shopping."
"Really? I'm going too!"
From beneath my chin, where I had my face shoved into the refrigerator, Eto poked her head out and applied to join the shopping party.
The words I'd blurted out to cover myself had just tightened the noose around my wallet.
Cursing my own carelessness, I started making an unplanned grocery list.
While I checked the house for dwindling necessities like detergent and tissues and wrote everything down, Eto read a book and waited for me to finish preparing. My eyes happened to catch the cover, and I asked in surprise.
"Hm? Eto. You've already read that far?"
"Yep! This book is fun!"
I could admit it was fun too, but wasn't she reading too fast? If she finished the novels in that series, Eto would have read every book in the house.
For some reason, Eto had shown interest in learning to read and write from a young age.
When you read books, you run into difficult kanji and idioms all the time, but if I handed her a dictionary, she would look up the meanings herself and study them. Her determination was impressive.
In the end, even at her young age, she'd become able to read most difficult books without much trouble.
I was proud of that, but at the same time it worried me.
Reading the same books over and over was important, but if you got too absorbed in only a narrow range of material, your thinking would start to form a rigid mold.
How dangerous fixed thinking could be was obvious if you looked at the many conflicts that happened in the world.
Buying more books from the bookstore was a problem in several ways, mainly because of space in our house and money.
After thinking for a moment, I glanced up at the clock. The time was 7:48. I had about three hours before I needed to head to my part-time job.
"Eto. Want to go to the library together today?"
"The library? I want to go!"
Eto shouted and bounced up like a small animal that had spotted food.
The place I took Eto by the hand was the nearest municipal library.
It wasn't very large, but it had an unexpectedly wide range of books, from old collections to the latest novels teenagers would like.
As we passed near the entrance, I saw an elderly man who looked like the librarian dozing at the counter.
I'd used this library many times back when I was in high school, and even then the same old man had been sleeping in the same spot. Seeing the same thing for years made me wonder if he might actually be a doll shaped like a sleeping old man.
Anyway, once we passed the counter and went inside, the smell of paper that hung over the whole library, along with shelves packed with far more books than our house had, welcomed us in a way that would have been rude to compare against.
Eto's eyes were shining as if she'd discovered a treasure vault.
"You can pick whatever you want to read."
"Yay~!"
"Quiet in the library."
"Yay, but quietly…!"
At my light rebuke, Eto lowered her voice, but it didn't seem like she could kill the excitement in her heart.
I sat down in a suitable chair and watched Eto bounce around silently as if she'd come to an amusement park, and a snort of laughter escaped me.
On the surface, she was just a bright, cheerful child who loved books... but because of one single thing that made her "different" from other people, she couldn't easily approach others.
This child was a Ghoul.
A being that could not survive without feeding on humans.
For Eto, social experience carried serious risks unlike it did for ordinary people.
Failure in youth was said to be natural, but for Eto, failure meant rejection, or death.
If she ever took even one wrong step, what awaited her was tragedy alone. Eto would have to live that kind of life from here on out.
"Books are definitely going to become that child's weapon..."
One must never underestimate the power of books. They are not merely records.
Whether it's a novel or anything else, every book contains the values and experiences of the person who wrote it.
Behind the words are the lives of people who experienced the world before Eto did, who experienced failure, who experienced success.
Eto could only read the written words and the information directly in front of her for now, but as she grew a little more, she would be able to read the author's values and opinions, and accept them or argue against them.
Grow together with the people in books, fail with them, and grow with them.
When you become an adult, may you use that as a weapon so you won't be broken by this cruel world....
"Heave-ho!"
Eto carried over a stack of books so tall that her upper body was almost completely hidden, and placed them on the desk where I was sitting.
Then she picked out the book she liked best and sat down across from me.
Whatever book she'd found, Eto's expression was incredibly serious.
Curious, I glanced at the title.
"...."
I froze in the same posture, my chin resting in my hand, unable to say anything for a moment.
Feeling a headache coming on, I barely managed to speak.
"...Eto, what are you doing right now?"
Eto looked up from the book and answered with a bright smile.
"I'm inheriting the knowledge of adults, Father."
The title of the book Eto was currently reading was this:
『How to Become a Mature Woman and Knock a Man Flat』
...What on earth kind of books does this library keep on its shelves? Knock a man flat? What exactly? At the very least, I didn't think it meant tripping him with a leg sweep.
I put the book back and left the library with Eto tucked under my arm.
On the way out, I had to work hard to soothe Eto, who was wriggling and whining, "Nooo—! I'm going to read that book—! I'm going to become a mature woman—!"