Dong-dong~! Dong-dong~!
There was a sound that chased away the precious sleep I desperately needed after a tiring dawn.
I frowned and opened my eyes. Outside the window, it was already broad daylight.
Eto was still asleep in my arms. Had she kept sleeping with me the whole time, or had she woken up and gone back to sleep so she wouldn't wake me? I decided the latter was more likely.
My hand groped around for my phone.
11:56 a.m. Damn it, I'd overslept.
Dong-dong~! Dong-dong~!
"So loud..."
Who the hell was hammering the doorbell with such terrible manners? Not only me, but Eto had also been woken by the sound.
Leaving Eto rubbing her eyes like a cat, I walked toward the front door.
"Yes, who is it—"
"KOMAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"
"Ghk!?"
The moment I opened the door, a perfectly executed lariat flew straight into my neck with enough force to make even a professional wrestler nod in satisfaction.
For a second or two, I was lifted off the ground before the impact sent me rolling across the floor.
"Daddy!?"
Eto screamed at the sudden scene.
I raised a hand to show I was fine, then shouted at the unexpected intruder.
"What the hell are you doing, Hitokawa!!"
"Shut up, you idiot!! What the hell did you do this time!!"
There he was, my stubborn old enemy Hitokawa Tomoru, storming in with a furious expression.
At Hitokawa's question, I couldn't help but feel a chill run through me.
Because Hitokawa was a Ghoul Investigator who hunted Ghouls.
He was still nothing more than a rookie among rookies, not even a year into his official investigator post, but he was definitely part of the force that stood in complete opposition to Ghouls.
And now he'd suddenly barged into our house, where I was hiding a Ghoul, and was glaring at me like this. I couldn't help but think something bad was coming.
But Hitokawa wasn't wearing the white coat that marked him as a Ghoul Investigator. He was in plain clothes, and his superior, who should have been with him, was nowhere in sight.
In other words, Hitokawa hadn't come here as a Ghoul Investigator. That was at least a relief.
Then why was he acting like this? He answered that question soon enough.
"Look at this!"
The sheet of paper Hitokawa thrust out... it had someone's composite sketch drawn on it. Huh? Why did this person look familiar? Where had I seen him?
Ah, I know. It was the guy I saw every morning in the mirror when I washed my face. ...Huh?
"...Wait, is this supposed to be me?"
"It's badly drawn. My dad's way more handsome than that."
Eto came over, peered at the composite sketch, and gave the drawing a low rating while highly praising my looks.
Hitokawa crossed his arms and looked down at us.
"Do you know there was a murder in this area yesterday?"
"...Not really. I don't know much about it."
I casually put on a poker face, erasing from my mind the story I'd heard from the police officer I'd met at dawn.
"The investigation found Ghoul bodily fluids at the murder scene. So the case was transferred from the police to us at the CCG."
"Hmm. So?"
"But not long after the incident, there was a suspicious person in the nearby area who reportedly fled after shaking off a police checkpoint."
Uh-oh.
"This is the composite sketch of that suspicious person, made from the police officers' eyewitness accounts. Doesn't it look a lot like you, even though it doesn't quite look like you?"
Uh-oh. Uh-oh.
"You didn't come all the way here just because of this and decide it was me, did you?"
"No, at first I thought it was just someone who looked a little like you. Those cops probably couldn't see clearly in the dark, because the details were different. But when I examined the composition of the liquid that was splashed on the police officer's face before that suspicious person ran off, I was sure it was you."
"Why?"
At that, Hitokawa pressed trembling fingers to his temple and shouted, "Paint, corn syrup, ammonia, and other stuff... and you're asking me that when the first test subject for the paint bomb you made as a kid is standing right in front of you!?"
Ah, right. Come to think of it, when was that? First or second grade?
Back then, I'd made a homemade paint bomb by accident and gotten curious about how effective it would be, so I tested it on Hitokawa and made him cry.
My father had scolded me, and I'd gone to apologize to Hitokawa and his parents with a huge lump on my head.
"Wow, you still remember that?"
"It was that traumatic..."
Was it really that shocking? Well, I guess if some weird-colored, weird-smelling, sticky liquid that wouldn't come off easily suddenly splattered all over your face, it would be pretty traumatic.
"Daddy. I want to make that paint bomb too."
"What would you use it for?"
"If that Hitokawa uncle barges into the house rudely like today, I'll throw it at him and chase him away."
"I'll teach you when I have time later. It's easy if you get the ratios right."
"Don't teach her!!"
After that, I half-listened to Hitokawa's lecturing for a while until he said something I couldn't just brush off.
"...Anyway! Because of this, the CCG is looking for you right now!"
"What?"
The CCG was looking for me?
Someone with nothing to hide might just shrug that off, but for me, with something I absolutely could not let them find, I couldn't help tensing up.
"By some coincidence, the police officer who returned to the checkpoint site where I was stopped found a few drops of blood that were presumed to be human. The higher-ups seem to have decided you might be the Ghoul responsible, or at least someone connected to the case."
"...!"
A few drops of blood.
I could easily guess where they'd come from.
It was the guitar case I'd shoved into the corner of the closet.
Normally I would have sealed it so tightly that not a single drop of blood could leak out, but I'd forced in far more meat than usual, and that must have created a gap.
The bloodstains found there were probably from blood I'd spilled.
The situation had become troublesome. But if I clammed up now, things would only get worse, so I answered quickly.
"Me, a Ghoul? No way."
"That's what I thought too, and I was going to report it, but I figured reporting something without being certain was dangerous. So let me ask you this. Why were you awake and going to a place like that at that hour?"
I couldn't exactly say I wasn't involved in the case, but I was doing something even more troublesome than being involved in it.
I couldn't let Hitokawa become suspicious of this. But I also couldn't just dodge the question.
If I told one lie, I'd have to keep piling lies on top of it. If I did that, I'd be exposed in no time.
The way to fool someone perfectly was to mix lies and truth together so they couldn't tell the difference.
A truth that could cover a lie... a truth I could say...
There was one truth I could tell Hitokawa, though it was something I could never reveal to just one person.
Glance.
"...?"
When I carefully looked at Eto, she tilted her head and met my eyes.
"Wait for me at home for a moment."
I patted Eto on the head, tapped Hitokawa on the shoulder, and gestured toward the door.
"Let's move somewhere else."
"...?"
Hitokawa looked puzzled for a moment, but sensing that my mood was strange, he quietly followed me out.
He didn't say a word until we left the house and got into the elevator, but the moment we stepped outside the villa entrance, he spoke.
"What's going on?"
"..."
Without saying a word, I took a cylindrical case from my pocket and tossed it to him. Hitokawa caught it neatly and looked at it with even deeper suspicion.
His eyes moved over the English printed on the surface.
"A, alp... alpra...? Zo..."
"Alprazolam. It's the medicine I'm taking."
"Medicine? Are you sick?"
"Sick, I guess... My body itself isn't the problem, though."
"What? If your body isn't sick, why are you taking medicine?"
"Even if my body's fine, this part isn't."
Tap tap.
I tapped my chest, and Hitokawa frowned as if he couldn't understand.
"Or maybe this part."
This time I tapped my head.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"It's an anti-anxiety drug."
"...!?"
Anti-anxiety drug.
To put it more plainly, it was a psychotropic medication in the narcotics category.
Apparently shocked that his friend had been taking something like this, Hitokawa was speechless for a while.
"Y-you! Why would you take something like this...!"
"Was it after my father died...? That's when things started getting weird. I can't even watch horror movies when they come on TV sometimes. The second a corpse shows up, I get nauseous and head straight for the bathroom."
"Koma..."
"Hey, Hitokawa..."
Ah, really, I was glad I was talking about this somewhere Eto couldn't hear.
Not just because of the content, but because the expression on my face right now was probably drier than anything either of us had ever seen before.
"Do you know what it feels like to have the fear of death gnawing away at your head every single day?"