After leaving his son's apartment, Harima Takaki had not walked far before he spotted the colleague who had been dispatched with him.
The man, with his easygoing air, noticed him too and raised a hand in greeting.
"Takaki, First Rank. Did you get a good look at your son? Even so, I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from leaving your post while on duty."
"Isn't that because you spent too long on that news interview, First Rank Fujiwara?"
Fujiwara Kimura was a Ghoul Investigator with less experience than Harima, but the same rank and roughly the same age.
Normally, Ghoul Investigators worked in pairs: upper-rank investigators, divided into First Rank, Associate Special Rank, and Special Rank, and lower-rank investigators, divided into Third Rank, Second Rank, and First Rank.
But Harima's partner, who had until recently been a First Rank investigator, had been promoted to First Rank and transferred away from his side.
So until a new partner could be found, he had been paired with another First Rank investigator and dispatched here on an ad hoc basis.
Fujiwara Kimura stroked his proud beard and showed the documents in his hand.
"While you were away, I looked into a few things and found a suspicious lead. Not long ago, there was a clash between Ghoul organizations in the neighboring 8th Ward, and one Ghoul who seemed to be a field commander for one of those groups apparently fled here to the 7th Ward with serious injuries. The timing lines up almost perfectly with the time of the incident and the time the bakery owner was murdered."
Harima carefully scanned the documents and said, "For a Ghoul, he left the signs of cannibalism far too openly, so I thought he was just a fool. But if he was forced to eat in a hurry to treat his injuries, that would explain it."
"Exactly. And after the incident, there was witness testimony that a suspicious man, bleeding, entered the sewer near Hamei Middle School."
"Then we've got our search area. Move out at once."
Harima and Fujiwara let their white coats flutter behind them as they headed for the sewer entrance.
To anyone who didn't know better, they would have looked like ordinary office workers heading out early in the morning, but from the Ghouls' point of view, their footsteps must have felt as heavy as a reaper's.
"..."
"Hm? What are you thinking about so hard?"
Ghoul searches were dangerous work; at any moment, a Ghoul could ambush them. It should have been a time to stay tense and alert, yet Harima kept drifting into other thoughts, and Fujiwara called him out on it.
"...Nothing. It's just that when I visited my son's place earlier, there was something that bothered me."
"If the Ghoul known to your kind as the 'Butcher' turns out to be a doting fool worried sick over his son, the Ghouls you've slaughtered until now will be rolling in their graves."
"Don't mock me. Isn't it only natural to worry?"
A dark shadow fell over Harima's face as he chided Fujiwara.
"He's a poor child who lost his mother in that way. I may not be able to play the role of a father, but I want that kid to grow up safely without any trouble."
"Can't be helped, then. But what was it that bothered you?"
"...A baby."
"...What?"
Fujiwara frowned at Harima's muttered reply.
"It was faint, but... there was the smell of a baby in my son's apartment."
Harima recalled the memory of when his own son had been a baby, long ago. Back then, his home had carried a similar scent.
If there had been the smell of formula, he might have distinguished it more clearly, but leaving that aside, the faint scent of baby powder and diapers had been lingering through the apartment.
"A baby? Your son was a high school student, wasn't he? What would a baby be doing in a high school boy's apartment? You must have mistaken the smell from a neighboring house."
"Could that be it...?"
Even so, his son's behavior had seemed oddly awkward, unlike usual... The thought flickered through his mind, but he had no choice but to stop thinking about it.
They had reached the sewer entrance they were aiming for.
The sewer gaped open like a tunnel, and a foul stench, like the breath of a beast's maw, drifted out from within.
"...There it is, blood."
After taking only a few steps into the darkness, Fujiwara bent down and brushed his hand over a visible smear of blood.
It had dried, but it was not so brittle that it crumbled easily. It was a fresh stain.
"So the one who hid here after all...."
"Fujiwara! Above!!"
At Harima's sudden roar, Fujiwara reflexively looked up.
From somewhere in the stained ceiling, a shadow suddenly swelled and dropped toward Fujiwara's head.
A man in his early thirties, clutching his wounded abdomen with one hand.
In both eyes, the blazing red [Kakugan] that proved he was a Ghoul.
And from his back, a red tentacle-like appendage sprouting like a tail and falling like a guillotine—his Kagune!
Kaaang!!!
The Kagune dropping toward Fujiwara was flung aside with a metallic shriek.
Looking over, he saw the iron briefcase that had slipped between the Ghoul and Fujiwara flying away, crushed inward.
It was clearly ruined, but the briefcase's mouth was open and its contents were gone. Which meant they had already been taken out.
Clack-clack-clack!!
Before the sound of something being rapidly assembled had even finished, Harima lunged at the Ghoul still drifting through the air.
In his hand was a massive blade that seemed large enough to cover Harima's entire body. It looked like a butcher's knife used to slaughter cattle.
The weapon forged to oppose Ghouls after long and brutal battles with them: a Quinque!
Kuwaaaang!!!
Harima's swinging Quinque and the Ghoul's Kagune collided without either side yielding, forcing the two apart by more than ten meters.
But the instant both feet touched the ground, they charged at each other again without hesitation.
Kuwa-gagagagagaaanng!!!
In an instant, a savage battle erupted.
The Ghoul's Kagune grew larger and larger, like an imugi, smashing the pillars supporting the sewer as it surged forward, while Harima swung his Quinque wide and met the blow with monstrous strength.
The Harima fighting the Ghoul was nothing like the father who had worried about his son just moments ago.
Only a ferocious killing intent remained, overflowing with the desire to tear apart the bones, flesh, and organs of the Ghoul before him.
"Kraaaaaaah!!!!"
With his injuries and the Ghoul Investigator pressing him hard, the Ghoul seemed to have reached the limit of his patience. He let out a furious howl and swept his Kagune sideways in a wide arc.
The Kagune, grown to its maximum size, had become thicker than the sewer pillars themselves. That overwhelming strike of murderous intent swept through everything in its path, pillars and walls alike.
Fujiwara ducked low and barely avoided it.
After confirming the strike had passed, he looked for Harima, but he was nowhere to be seen. Had he been caught in that blow?
Thinking Harima dead, the Ghoul turned toward Fujiwara as if to say, You're next.
That was the Ghoul's fatal mistake.
Thud!!
"Ghk!!"
Dirty sewer water surged upward, and the huge butcher's knife pierced straight through the Ghoul's back.
The Ghoul screamed, blood mixing into the cry.
"No matter how sharp your Ghoul noses are, it seems you still can't pick out something masked by the stench of filth."
Harima had not been struck by the Kagune attack at all; he had hidden himself in the sewage.
Even Fujiwara, his colleague, felt a chill at Harima's resolve—he had thrown himself into that revolting water without the slightest hesitation, all for the sake of victory.
Thud!!Crack!!
Harima twisted his waist hard and yanked the Quinque out of the Ghoul's back. Then, using the recoil from his spine snapping back from its fully twisted position, he swung with all his might.
With a sound like bone crumbling, the Ghoul's head flew into the air.
That was not the end.
Thud!!Crunch!!Squelch!!Thump!!Snap!!Thud!!
Harima, as if possessed by a demon, hacked at the already dead Ghoul's corpse without pause.
He tore flesh, shattered bone, and ground the organs underfoot, continuing the destruction as though it still wasn't enough.
It was only when Fujiwara approached and placed a hand on his shoulder that light returned to the pupils buried in Harima's black gaze.
"That's enough. No matter how much of a Ghoul it is, it's still a sentient being with a life. There's no need to dishonor the corpse like this."
"Nonsense. Did they ever show us that much courtesy when they killed us? There is not a single thing about them worthy of pity."
Harima's voice was cold, but he no longer continued the butchery and instead put away his Quinque.
Fujiwara sighed, as he always did when facing Ghouls and seeing Harima become a different man entirely.
"You really do show Ghouls no mercy at all. Isn't it about time you thought of retiring? At this rate, will you ever be able to take off that suit properly?"
"I have no intention of taking this suit off until the day I die."
Harima clenched his white coat in his bloodied hand and glared down at the Ghoul's corpse, which no longer even retained a shape.
"Every Ghoul in this world—I will kill them all with my own hands. Man or woman, old or child, every last one of them...!"
"Huh?!"
Still recovering from the exhaustion caused by my father's surprise visit, I jolted awake from my nap with a horrible nightmare.
"Ugh... I dreamed that Father was charging at Eto with a knife..."
Please let this not be a prophetic dream... Thinking that, I looked around for Eto.
"Eto? Where are yo...."
"Daaa?"
I stopped speaking.
Because I had just witnessed Eto punching a clean hole straight through my laptop with the Ghoul's ridiculous strength.
"Etooooooo!!!!!"