The first time Eto realized she was different from her father, it began with something as trivial as a single action.
That day is still vivid in her memory.
As usual, she threw herself into her father‘s arms when he came home from work. He gave a wry smile and said he‘d been sweating a lot, so he probably smelled, but Eto didn‘t find that smell unpleasant. If anything, the stronger his scent became, the more it felt like something inside her was filling up.
It was just another ordinary day.
Just another ordinary bit of clingy behavior.
And there was a little impish mischief in her too, a childish urge to see her father flustered a little more.
She bit his arm.
Just a little.
She was sure it had only been a little.
But in that instant, Eto‘s body slipped out of her control.
Crack!
It made a sound no mere light bite should ever have been able to produce.
A rapture she had never felt before surged up from deep inside her mouth.
The taste was nothing like the “meat” her father brought home. Eto couldn‘t come to her senses for a while, as if she had drunk hard liquor and gotten drunk on it.
Without even thinking about what that sound had been, she chewed and swallowed the pleasure that had flowed into her mouth.
In response, a hot sigh rose from deep in her lungs. A dangerous, dizzying sensuality that no five-year-old should have possessed was hiding Eto‘s expression.
Then she came to her senses.
What she saw in front of her was a large pool of blood staining the floor, her father sitting collapsed on the ground while clutching his arm, and his face biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood as he endured the pain.
Huh…? Huh…?
I… did that?
I… ate… Dad?
She was confused.
She couldn‘t believe that the self who had hurt her father, the self who had just been happily chewing on a piece of his flesh, was really her.
As Eto sat down and burst into tears, he came over, suppressing his injury.
“It‘s okay.”
With his unharmed arm, he wrapped Eto‘s head in his embrace and, hiding his pain, spoke in the same calm tone he always used.
He soothed her, telling her over and over that it was okay.
Eto cried herself to sleep in his arms.
When she woke again, the house had been cleaned up so neatly it was as if the whole thing had been a dream. Her father was in the kitchen too, looking just as he always did while cooking.
Had she really just dreamed it?
No.
Her father‘s right arm.
Bandages were wrapped around the spot Eto had bitten.
Still unable to escape the confusion of what she had done that day, her father told her the truth.
That she was a being called a Ghoul.
That she was a being who could not survive unless she ate human flesh.
That if people found out she was a Ghoul, many would come to hate Eto.
And that it would draw in the Ghoul‘s “natural enemy.”
Her father earnestly told Eto never to tell anyone that she was a Ghoul. If she did, he said, Eto and her father might be separated forever.
Eto kept that promise.
She didn‘t want to be separated from her father. She didn‘t want people to hate her.
If there was anyone who found out about it… then she had to silence that person‘s mouth.
Absolutely.
That was why Eto revealed her identity to the woman she met on the cliff.
So she could drive herself into a corner.
So she could gather the courage to push the woman over the cliff with her own hands.
So she could confirm “death” with her own eyes.
**
“……”
“……”
Silence fell.
The woman stared at Eto, not even noticing that her cigarette had burned down to the filter.
What kind of reaction would she give? The best outcome would be for her to dismiss it as a child‘s prank.
If she let her guard down, Eto‘s ambush would have a chance of succeeding too.
“A Ghoul… huh.”
And then, at last, the woman spoke.
“I see.”
Click. Hoooo….
That was all.
She flicked away the burned-out cigarette butt and took out a fresh one. That was the entirety of her reaction.
She wasn‘t flustered, and she didn‘t deny Eto‘s words as a lie. She simply accepted them and stopped there.
Eto, not the woman, was the one thrown off by the unexpected response.
“You don‘t believe me?”
“No, I do. At least, I don‘t think it‘s a lie. I mean…”
The woman held the cigarette and pointed its tip toward Eto‘s hand.
“I figured you wouldn‘t be shaking that badly over some little prank.”
“……!”
Was it because of what she was about to do? Eto hadn‘t even noticed that her own hands were trembling pitifully.
She braced herself inwardly.
It was fine. A Ghoul‘s physical abilities were strong even in a child. She could even beat her father at arm wrestling sometimes, assuming he wasn‘t deliberately losing.
All she had to do was push with both hands.
She would kill that woman and see with her own eyes the thing gnawing at her father.
And then she would take it in her hands and carry it away.
She would no longer let her father bear that heavy burden alone.
The woman quietly watched Eto, who had taken on a seriousness far beyond her age, and then spoke.
“You‘re trying to kill me?”
“Have you suddenly decided you want to live?”
“Not really. I don‘t even have the courage to end my own life, so if someone else wants to do it for me, I couldn‘t ask for more.”
The woman calmly drew on her cigarette as if she didn‘t care what Eto did to her once she came closer.
What a strange person, Eto thought.
Wasn‘t it human nature, and the instinct of all living things, to struggle to survive when faced with death? Or was she just acting to trick Eto and escape?
Eto didn‘t let her guard down.
Whether she cared or not, the woman kept talking as if she wanted to chat with Eto.
“But why are you here alone? Ghouls have parents too, don‘t they?”
“……My parents are human.”
“…………Wow. Really?”
The woman was so shocked that she went silent for a while, even more than when Eto had revealed she was a Ghoul, before finally speaking again.
“Sounds like you‘ve got a lot going on. A human raising a Ghoul, huh… Your parents must have it rough.”
Throb.
If that had been meant to create an opening for escape, then the intent would have succeeded for sure.
But when the woman saw Eto flinch, she made no move to run.
“Sorry. I guess I hit a sore spot…”
Instead, she apologized, blaming herself for the thoughtless remark that had hurt Eto.
That apology made tears well up in Eto‘s eyes. Seeing that, the woman climbed down from the guardrail and approached her.
Startled!
Eto reflexively took a defensive stance, but the woman simply reached out as if it didn‘t matter what she did.
Her hand stroked Eto‘s head.
“……”
Eto stayed tense, but before long she leaned into that touch.
It was rough and clumsy, unlike the way her father patted her. But in that hand was a kind of “affection” similar to his.
“……I see. So that‘s why you came here alone. Because your parents are human and you‘re a Ghoul. Because until now, your parents have been the ones getting food for you. You didn‘t want them to keep suffering because of it, did you?”
Nod.
“I see. You‘re a good daughter. But I can‘t call that a wise decision. One piece of meat on the table isn‘t enough to show us how cruel the world we live in is. You have to go to the slaughterhouse yourself and watch cattle and pigs die, watch them get butchered, before you finally understand that we‘re part of that cruel nature too. But you‘re too young to be trying to understand how cruel the world is.”
Eto wiped her tears and looked up at the woman.
There was genuine advice in her words, meant for Eto‘s sake.
As if Eto had become the mother she had never once seen.
“Your parents would never want that either. It would leave a scar on your immature heart that would never go away.”
“I don‘t care.”
Eto did not back down. She made her resolve clear.
“Dad is taking the wounds I‘m supposed to bear someday in my place. Dad‘s heart is covered in scars. I don‘t want that. If I‘m going to get hurt someday, then I‘ll get hurt now. I won‘t let those wounds pile up on top of Dad‘s scars anymore.”
“……How admirable. In that case, I have no choice.”
The woman withdrew the hand that had been stroking Eto‘s head and stood up, opening the cigarette pack.
“There‘s only one left. Will you wait until I finish this one?”
“……?”
While Eto tilted her head, the woman lit the cigarette and took a deep drag.
Hoooooo….
Watching the smoke vanish into nothing, the woman suddenly spoke.
“You know, I had an abortion.”
“Abor…tion…?”
Eto didn‘t know the word. But for some reason, the woman‘s voice as she said it sounded unbearably sad.
“It means erasing a baby. I used to be a little wild back then. I lived recklessly, doing all kinds of stupid things without thinking about the future, and I finally went and did it. I got pregnant with some man I didn‘t even know, and my parents made me get rid of it, saying how could I raise a baby when I didn‘t even know who the father was.”
Hoooooo….
“But after I got rid of the baby… I never had a day when my heart felt at ease. It was like I‘d erased part of my heart along with the baby. Whenever I passed by someone else‘s child, I‘d always think of the baby I‘d erased. That never went away, even as the years passed. Ah, if I hadn‘t erased that child, it would be this big by now. If that child were still alive, it would be that big by now… things like that.”
Hoooooo….
“It was about five or six years ago, so… if I had become that child‘s mother, it would be just about your age now.”
The woman looking at Eto was not crying. But in Eto‘s eyes, she looked as if she were.
As if she had cried so often that she no longer had tears left, and only invisible sorrow was running down her cheeks.
“Ah…”
Just as Eto was about to say something, the woman flicked away her last cigarette and smiled at her.
“I‘ll give you my ’death‘ as a gift.”
“……!!”
The woman spread her arms and leaned her body over the guardrail as if lying down into a bed.
“It‘ll hurt, and it‘ll be hard… but live on stubbornly.”
Before Eto could even react.
The woman smiled with the ease of someone finally setting down a heavy burden.
And then she vanished below the cliff.