I woke up in the morning and made myself some simple toast. Checking my phone, I saw a text from Hitokawa saying he'd done well on the exam and had happily accepted the rice cakes.
Eto was still asleep, but she'd definitely be hungry when she woke up, so I decided to draw some fresh blood.
Lately I'd been drawing too much blood, and I was starting to feel anemic. I should buy some meat, but I don't have the money, so... sigh.
I stuck the blood-draw needle into my arm, something I could practically do with my eyes closed now, and idly chewed on toast while blood collected in the bag.
Still half-asleep and staring blankly out the window, I suddenly stopped when my gaze landed on the diaper box.
"Ah, we're out of diapers."
For the first time since I stopped going to school, I decided to go out with Eto.
After fastening the baby carrier and holding Eto against my chest, I also put on sunglasses to hide my [Kakugan].
When I opened the front door and stepped outside, a gloomy sky that looked ready to pour at any moment greeted us.
"Is it going to rain?"
"Boo!"
Just in case, I took an umbrella and left the villa where I lived.
The weather was dreary, so the humidity was high, but the breeze was cool enough to feel pleasant.
As I whistled in a good mood, I noticed Eto moving her head left and right in time with the sound, and a small laugh slipped out of me.
After about fifteen minutes of walking, I visited the supermarket where I'd already become completely familiar with the woman at the register. Since it was morning, there weren't many people around, so it was quiet.
By chance, as I passed the food section, I thought about my current condition and the anemia I'd been dealing with lately.
No matter how broke I was, if I keeled over like this, I'd be dead in the water, so I needed to accept that sometimes I'd have to spend money and buy meat.
After asking the woman in the food section for a chunk of the one dripping blood, I felt like collapsing for a moment because my wallet had become that much lighter.
With diapers in one hand and a plastic bag containing meat in the other, I headed home.
I took out the key, inserted it into the lock, and turned it.
Click.
I froze.
Seeing the key turn all the way without catching on anything, I went rigid.
The lock... wasn't locked.
Did I forget to lock the door when I left? No way. I'd definitely checked that it was locked before I came out.
Then someone had unlocked it? The landlord? Or a thief?
I almost wished it was them.
Because the worst possible scenario I could imagine had just flashed through my head.
I always hid a spare key in case I ever lost mine. It was on top of the electrical box near the house.
It was higher than head level, so anyone passing through the hallway wouldn't notice it. But when I reached for it, there was no metallic feel in my hand.
No doubt about it. Someone had opened the door with the key from here.
The way I hid the key was a habit that went back to the house I used to live in.
And the only people who knew that habit were the people who lived there.
Me, my mother, and my father.
Now that my mother was gone, the only one who knew that habit besides me was...
"...Father."
When I opened the door and saw my father inside, I suppressed my panic and spoke.
I was screwed. I'd prepared for this after my father's surprise visit last time, but that plan only assumed I'd be home.
My father had come while I was out. Which meant he'd seen all the baby supplies I hadn't had time to hide.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, my father turned his head and spoke.
"Come in."
The air felt so heavy I thought I might be crushed by it.
It had been twenty minutes since I came into the room and sat across from my father. In all that time, not a single word had passed between us. If silence could dry a person out and kill them, this was surely how it would happen.
The only sounds filling the room were the rain that had started to fall and strike the window one drop at a time, the meaningless ticking of the clock, and...
"Uu~?"
The sound of Eto patting my father's knee as if she'd found something interesting.
Stop that, Eto. My already trembling heart feels like it's about to go into convulsions. And you're basically teasing your natural enemy right now!
Since the baby supplies had already been discovered, I knew trying to cover it up with a lie would only make things worse, so I'd gone ahead and shown Eto openly, but now I was starting to wonder if that had been a mistake.
While I was frantically turning my brain over, trying to figure out how to explain Eto to my father, he finally opened that heavy mouth of his.
"...I'm sorry."
"...Huh?"
Huh? What did I just hear?
Wasn't this the part where I should be prostrating myself and begging? And yet I was hearing my father apologize?
Whether he knew his son was panicking or not, my father continued in a low voice.
"No matter how little attention I've paid to you, I never imagined you'd end up making a baby and raising her alone... This is all my fault. It's a parent's job to set a wandering child back on the right path. The fact that I wasn't there for you is a grave failing on my part."
Uhh... If I followed my father's logic just now...
"He thinks Eto is my child!?"
It was shocking, but when I thought about it, this misunderstanding was natural. He'd never have imagined I was just raising some old man I knew's daughter.
Anyway, this wasn't a bad turn of events.
The worst possible outcome right now would be Eto's Ghoul identity being exposed. If that happened, I didn't even want to imagine what would come next.
Compared to that, it would be far better to invent a nonexistent fling and pretend I was the baby's father.
I have to ride this wave!
"I-I'm sorry too! I couldn't be honest with you, Father..."
"It's all right. But where is the woman?"
"Um... she died, no, I mean, she left?"
"She left? And left you and the baby behind?"
"Yeah. She went somewhere really far away, so I had no choice but to raise her myself."
"You must have had a hard time."
My father stroked Eto's head as she hovered around his knees. Eto didn't seem to dislike his rough, calloused hand and leaned into the touch.
My father seemed to find her cute too, because a faint smile appeared on his face.
Anyone looking at us would have thought it was a peaceful scene between an adult and a baby. For someone who knew he was a Ghoul Investigator and she was a Ghoul, it was nerve-racking beyond belief.
My father looked at Eto for a while, then turned to me with a resolved expression.
"You don't need to suffer anymore. I'll raise this child."
"Absolutely nottttttttttttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
I screamed reflexively at his words. Him raising a Ghoul? Unless he was planning to heat a nuclear bomb on a frying pan, what else could that be?
But when I saw my startled father and Eto starting to cry, I regretted reacting too quickly.
"Why are you reacting like that, Koma?"
Suspicion appeared on my father's face. No good. If I didn't explain properly right now, he'd notice something was off!
While I picked Eto up to soothe her, I opened my mouth to my father.
I didn't have the luxury of deciding whether what I was saying was right or wrong, but for now I had no choice but to leave everything to heaven and just go for it.
"Of course it's hard! I know people around me would criticize me too! But Eto is my child! Even if I get insulted, even if I'm drowning in poverty! Even if I have to wake up in the middle of the night to soothe her when she cries, change her diapers at all hours, and feed her too! Even if there were plenty of times I wanted to give up because it was so hard! Still, right now, I'm Eto's dad! I may be a pathetic man who can't even take proper responsibility for my own life, but I do have a father's sense of responsibility!! So I can't give her up!! I'm the one raising Eto!!"
Huff, huff.
I'd just been blurting out whatever came to mind, but once I finished, it actually sounded surprisingly convincing.
Maybe it worked on my father too, because after thinking for a moment, he nodded as if he understood.
"...If that's how you feel, then there's nothing to be done. Very well. Then you may raise her."
Yes, it worked! Turning my head where my father couldn't see, I clenched my fist with a triumphant smile.
Anyway, it was a relief that my father wasn't going to interfere with raising Eto.
This meant I'd be able to raise Eto a little more comfortably...
Drip...
"Huh?"
A strange sensation touched the tip of my nose.
By the time I noticed it and reacted, it was already too late.
Since when? Was it because I'd been worn out from taking care of Eto? Or had I gotten too worked up while delivering that speech just now?
Of all times, a nosebleed. And I was already worried about not having enough blood in my body...
"Koma, your nose is..."
My father, who had started to rise after seeing me bleed from the nose, stopped halfway through the motion.
"Misfortune always comes suddenly."
That line suddenly came to mind. It was one of my favorite passages from a novel I liked.
The misfortune that had come to me wasn't my father's sudden visit.
After barely getting past what I'd thought was the disaster, I'd finally relaxed, only for the real disaster to come crashing down on the back of my head.
"............Koma, put 'that' down right now."
My father's voice, spoken quietly and with something tightly suppressed beneath it, sounded colder than a stranger's.
In one hand, he was already gripping a steel briefcase hard enough to crush it, and the half-risen posture he'd frozen in no longer looked like a movement interrupted halfway through standing up. It looked like a predator about to lunge at its prey.
My father's gaze wasn't on me.
That gaze, sharper than a blade, was tearing apart not me, but Eto in my arms.
The blood dripping from the tip of my nose... Eto, who had happily accepted it as if it were her usual meal...
Eto, with the proof of being a Ghoul, her [Kakugan], appearing in her right eye.