I barely got away. But I couldn't be sure I'd shaken him off completely.
The cold rain was draining my strength in real time, and my breath kept surging up like it was going to tear my lungs apart.
At this rate, I'd collapse from exhaustion before Father ever caught me, so I looked for somewhere to hide and catch my breath for a moment.
When I slipped out of the narrow alley, I saw a riverbank and a broad bridge spanning it.
I judged that it would be a decent place to get out of the rain and recover for a bit, so I ran there.
"Hah... hah... hah..."
Hiding myself between the pillars supporting the bridge, I tried to steady my breathing.
Only after my breathing calmed did I realize Eto was crying.
Had my breathing been so loud that I hadn't noticed? Or had I simply been too desperate to spare any attention for it? Probably both.
"I'm sorry... Father scared you, didn't he..."
As I soothed Eto, I looked into her tear-filled eyes.
Seeing my own reflection in them made me sigh.
"No... I'm the one who scared you."
After falling into a tree, crashing onto concrete, and rolling through mud, I looked like a wreck. It made sense that Eto would be frightened by how I looked now, so different from usual.
Shiver...
Maybe because I'd been running in the rain the whole time, a chill kept rising through me. I rubbed my arms to try to warm myself up, but the cold wouldn't go away.
My head throbbed dully, and my whole body felt heavy, as if someone had piled weights on it.
"Damn it, of all times..."
I was already in poor condition, and now I'd gotten soaked and burned through too much stamina. It looked like I'd caught a cold.
I had to get away before Father caught up. Just as I forced my body to stand—
Squelch.
It wasn't my footsteps. It was the sound of someone else stepping into the mud.
So many bad things had piled up one after another that today was definitely the worst day of my life.
Leaning against the pillar, I turned my head, and sure enough, there was Father.
"You're injured. The bleeding is too much to have been washed away by the rain."
Ah. Right. That too.
The tree branch lodged in my back. The wound had split open, and now blood was streaming out with no point in leaving it in there anymore.
I'd thought the rain would wash away all traces of blood, but apparently not. Or maybe Father's tracking ability was just that good.
Seeing my condition, Father extended a hand and said, "Come here. Let's go to the hospital."
"...I'll go if you promise to take Eto to the hospital too."
"..."
Father silently raised the arm holding his Quinque.
It was a clear refusal.
He meant to kill Eto here and take me to the hospital afterward.
Then my answer was this.
"Uu...?"
I set down the uneasy Eto and pushed myself upright.
Then I turned my body and clenched my fist.
A clear fighting stance. My answer was basically, go to hell.
Father let out a sigh, as if he was worn down by my refusal to give up, and said, "Why? Why are you going this far to protect a Ghoul? Is that baby really that precious to you?"
"Well... at first she was just a nuisance dumped on me by some old man I knew, but after living together for the past month, I think I've turned into a total daughter fool."
Watching Father stride toward me, I gritted my teeth and walked toward him as well.
"Move."
"No."
"I'll say it again. Move."
"I'll say it as many times as you want. No."
And when the distance between us closed, I kicked off the ground and lunged, swinging my fist.
Grab.
But it was caught far too easily.
When Father twisted his body, mine was dragged along without any way to resist.
Thud!!
"Ghk!!"
The world flipped over, and my body was slammed onto the ground.
A liquid that might have been blood or stomach acid surged up into my mouth. I spat it aside, rolled, and forced myself back up.
Father ignored me completely and lifted the butcher's knife-shaped Quinque onto his shoulder. It was the throwing stance of someone hurling a spear. His target was Eto!
"Stop!!"
I tackled him around the waist.
Because of that, the Quinque, which had been thrown off balance just slightly, flew past its target and embedded itself a little off to the side.
KRAAANG!!
The place it struck was about thirty centimeters to the left of where Eto was standing. She didn't seem to be hurt.
Before I could even feel relieved, Father's elbow slammed down on my back.
Thwack!!
"Cough!!"
I couldn't control my breathing. The arm I'd wrapped around Father's waist lost strength and slipped away.
Father grabbed my collar as I dropped to my knees and hauled me upright. Then came a fist sharp as fire.
Pow!!!
It was completely a fight between an adult and a child.
No, it was already adult versus child, but as a battle between a middle-aged man who'd lived half his life and a young guy in his prime, it was far too one-sided.
Pow!!!
The direction I was knocked rolling in was toward Eto.
One of the arms I'd been using to lift my upper body lost strength and I nearly collapsed, but if I had, Eto might have been crushed and hurt, so I forced myself to hold on.
"Kh... cough...!"
When I coughed, torn flesh and blood spilled from my mouth and dripped onto Eto.
Eto, who would normally have been happily eating this, was now only crying at the top of her lungs. Could even a baby this young tell that something terrifying was happening?
"Why... in the world..."
Rarely, Father's voice was trembling.
When I looked over, I saw him grinding his teeth, his fist shaking.
"Why do you keep protecting a Ghoul!? Have you forgotten what Ghouls did to our family!? At least you! You, who saw the events of that day with your own eyes! I thought that even if you couldn't avenge Ghouls with me, you'd at least understand my hatred! But now! Why in the world...!"
"..."
...Ah. So he's bringing up that memory.
I wiped the blood from my mouth and got back to my feet.
"That incident?"
I faced Father.
Even after losing a lot of blood, getting beaten badly, and catching a cold on top of it all, the only reason I could still stand straight like this was probably because anger was pumping adrenaline through me like crazy.
Yes. I was angry.
The anger I'd suppressed for so long, the buried feeling I'd normally kept sealed away with a calm mind, was now leaking out through the cracks.
"You mean the incident where Mother was killed by a Ghoul?"
Yes. For you, that was the reason you hated Ghouls.
Because you lost the wife you loved, the woman you swore you would love and no one else in this world, that was why you hated Ghouls so much.
"Yes! I can't forgive those bastards! What right do they have to steal our family's happiness!? Ghouls are beings that warp the world!! They must be eliminated!!!"
Father shouted in fury.
Me too. I lost my family too. I lost the mother I loved too.
But the target of my anger wasn't the Ghoul.
It was the man standing right in front of me.
"That's not something you should be saying, Father...!!!"
"...What?"
Father looked blank, as if he couldn't understand my anger.
"I saw it. I saw it clearly with these eyes! I still remember it! That day! The Ghoul who attacked Mother and me after we'd gone out shopping! The way that bastard cut off Mother's breath, and tried to take my life too!! It's exactly as you know it!!"
But...!! Even as I spoke, my voice was thick with helpless grief.
There was still something Father didn't know.
There was something only I, who had been there when Mother was killed that day, remembered.
There was a sight only I could understand!
"That Ghoul... was 'crying.'"
"Crying...?"
"Yes! Why do you think that is!? Because that Ghoul was a Ghoul who had lost his family to a Ghoul Investigator named 'some man'!! In that sorrow!! In that hatred!! That Ghoul was trying to take revenge in the same way he'd suffered!! On you, Father!!"
"...!?!!"
"I hated that Ghoul! But at the same time, I also felt pity for him! Because that Ghoul, who came toward me after killing Mother and trying to kill me too, kept crying and apologizing over and over! That was the only way left for him! For a Ghoul whose beloved family had been murdered and who had nothing left but despair, revenge was the only reason he was still breathing!!"
Cough!!Cough!!
Because I'd shouted without stopping in my excitement, every injured part of my body screamed in protest.
I steadied my breathing and continued.
"...The Ghoul who saved me there was a Ghoul named Kuzen."
"Kuzen...?"
"Yes. And... he's Eto's father."
It was something I learned later, but the Ghoul who attacked me and Mother had been a target of the 'organization' Kuzen used to belong to.
Kuzen had come to eliminate that Ghoul, and instead found our mother and child after we'd been attacked by him.
"Mister Kuzen... even knowing that showing himself would put him in danger, he still took me to the hospital while I was barely hanging on. He's my benefactor."
I lifted my head and glared at Father.
Shocked by the truth he'd never expected, he was staggering, desperately keeping his legs from giving out.
"And now!! You're trying to do the exact same thing that Ghoul did!!"
"...!!"
"If you kill Eto here, Mister Kuzen will never forgive you!! But!! If Mister Kuzen kills you for revenge!! Then this time, I won't be able to forgive Mister Kuzen!!"
How tiresome.
It was an endlessly tiresome chain of hatred.
"So I want to cut it off!! This disgusting chain!! Don't let this rotten hatred keep going any further!! Let's end it with our generation!!"
Maybe I'd lost too much blood, because my vision was starting to blur. But I only raised my voice higher. There was still more I had to say. I couldn't collapse before I got it all out.
Father's face had gone pale, and cold sweat was running down him.
With confused eyes that seemed unable to make sense of anything anymore, he muttered, "That can't be... Ghouls are beings that warp the world..."
"It's not just Ghouls!!!"
My knees were starting to buckle. More blood spilled out, darker than before.
I ignored every warning my body was sending me, telling me to stop or I'd be in danger.
"The thing that warps the world!!! It's not just Ghouls!!!"
Please! Please, admit it, Father!
Humans are never the rulers of all things. If humans become unhappy, then humans themselves are surely responsible too!
"It's not just Ghouls who make humans unhappy!! The one making you the most miserable right now is you yourself, Father!!!"
"...!!!!"
Thud.
Father's knees gave out. So did mine.
What a ridiculous father-and-son fight. A fight that only left both our minds and bodies badly wounded. Even children wouldn't fight this pathetically.
"Father..."
I tried to force the words out, but whether my throat was ruined or my body had really reached its limit, no more strong voice would come.
"If you hear this and still... if you still reject Ghouls to the very end... if you're going to do it even knowing that it will end with you being eaten by a Ghoul... then just do it that way."
My vision was too blurred. I couldn't even tell whether Father was listening to me anymore.
"So please...! Even if the only ending left is being eaten by a Ghoul...!! Let me believe in Ghouls and walk toward them...!!"
This is my last bit of childishness in my life.
Please hear me, Father..........
Thud.
**
My mind went blank.
Right after hearing my son's story, I could no longer think of anything.
No, I was refusing to think.
I was trying to accept it as nothing more than a child's nonsense, something not even worth listening to.
"Ueeehh~! Ueeehhh~!"
I could hear a baby crying.
I saw the Ghoul's baby, the one I hated, crawling through the mud toward my son.
"..."
I gripped my Quinque.
I was a Ghoul Investigator. What I had to do had not changed.
Feeling that the butcher's knife-shaped Quinque was somehow heavier than usual today, I approached the Ghoul's baby.
"Ueeehh~! Ueeehhh~!!"
As I came closer, the baby cried even louder. But it still refused to leave my son's side.
Instead, it wrapped both arms around my unconscious son's face.
It looked almost as if... the baby was throwing itself in front of my son to protect him.
"..."
I raised the Quinque over my head. To finish it in one blow, I put strength into the hand holding it...
-It's not just Ghouls!
I put strength into it...
-The thing that warps the world! It's not just Ghouls!
I...
"Damn it..."
Clang.
The Quinque slipped from my hand and rolled across the ground.
A sob tore out of me. Just like the rain still pouring down, tears kept spilling out without end as I cried.