After eating breakfast with Koma's special sauce—blood—Eto slung on her schoolbag and left the house.
The road to school, a route she usually walked without thinking, felt heavy today, as if she were crossing a swamp.
An elementary school student around her age passed by her side.
He wore an easy, carefree smile, as if he had no worries at all. Eto stopped walking and looked at her reflection in a building's glass window.
She tried to smile. ...No good. It looked too awkward.
When she was with Koma, she felt safe. But now that they were apart, she didn't.
The fear that she might be separated from Dad again was clearly creeping up inside her.
It was obvious enough that Koma would notice she was anxious.
"Can I really leave everything to Dad...?"
It wasn't that she didn't trust Koma. But she couldn't shake her worry.
For her sake, he had a habit of shouldering everything alone, even if it meant pushing himself too far.
Hadn't that nearly broken both his body and mind before?
Wasn't there another way? Some answer that would lighten Koma's burden and solve this more simply, more decisively.
Right now, only Hitokawa knew Eto's identity.
Koma had said that until he settled things with Hitokawa face-to-face, Hitokawa wouldn't tell anyone else.
"If... if only, hypothetically..."
She thought about it.
If some unfortunate accident were to happen to Hitokawa?
If he could never speak to anyone again, couldn't write, and lost consciousness... if he were reduced to something close to a coma... no, even a more certain state would be fine.
A state of silence that no one could refuse, the cruelest and most honest way to protect a secret.
If the human named Hitokawa Tomoru were to die...
"...!!!"
Eto's thoughts stopped dead.
Dangerous. Her reason warned her not to think any further.
And dizzy from realizing she had been imagining something so frightening just moments ago, she braced herself against the glass.
She looked at her reflection again.
-Your face right now... it looks like someone about to commit murder.
"..."
...Right now, she thought she understood what Minami had said before leaving.
This was not a face she could ever show Koma. Nor should she.
Eto staggered forward anyway.
She wasn't in the mood for school.
Worse, if she stood out in a bad way, a teacher might notice and pass along her condition to Koma.
She kept walking without a destination.
She just wanted somewhere without the presence of people.
Somewhere her Ghoul senses could rest, somewhere no one had entered her territory.
Before long, she reached a park in the middle of the city.
Because it was a weekday afternoon, the place was quiet.
Eto sat on a bench, drew her knees up, and buried her face in them.
Quiet.
The quiet when she was with someone felt suffocating, but the quiet when she was alone somehow felt reassuring.
A breeze that had been skimming over the grass drifted to her side and gently brushed her hair. Feeling a little refreshed by it, Eto calmed herself.
Recovering her composure and looking back at reality were two different things. Eto muttered in a weak voice, "...Maybe I really shouldn't be with Dad."
"Why would you think that?"
"――――!?!?!!"
Her body reacted on reflex, and Eto sprang up.
She put more than ten meters between herself and the bench, then glared at it. Right beside the bench she had been sitting on, a man she had never seen before was seated.
He wore a black coat that covered him down to the ankles, despite the weather not being cold. A black fedora pulled low over his head hid most of his face, but he looked to be middle-aged.
Eto was startled enough by his appearance that her heart pounded.
Her senses were spread out like spiderwebs in every direction, monitoring for any intrusion by a stranger.
And yet the man had approached without a sound. Eto hadn't noticed him at all until he sat beside her and spoke.
She sniffed the air. No smell at all. Odorless.
The man lifted a leather-gloved hand and adjusted the fedora on his head. Even that movement made no faint noise. Soundless.
Under the slightly readjusted hat, the man met Eto's eyes.
His impression was too faint. The kind of face you could mistake for an ordinary neighborhood uncle and walk right past.
Even though he wore such a conspicuous black coat in broad daylight, his presence was as dim as if he were hidden in darkness at midnight. Colorless.
He had an eerie presence, but Eto couldn't tell whether he was an enemy or not.
While she was confused and breaking out in a cold sweat, the middle-aged man calmly extended a finger and pointed at Eto.
"Your 'eye' has been exposed."
"...! Ah!"
At those words, Eto touched her right eye. She couldn't see it, but she knew.
The heat rising in her right eye was proof that she was revealing her [Kakugan].
"Don't handle your emotions so clumsily. Emotion, aside from hunger, is one of the easiest things for a Ghoul to expose itself with."
She had already paid a painful price for that this morning.
Eto tried to draw back her [Kakugan], but it wouldn't disappear as easily as she wanted.
"If you're reacting to an unfamiliar stranger, to someone whose friend or foe you can't tell, then change how you think about them. Instead of assuming they're an enemy, think of them as a 'liar.' That'll make it easier. You can keep your guard up without letting your [Kakugan] run wild."
"Ah...!"
Following the man's advice, the heat in her right eye began to fade. Her [Kakugan] was receding.
Eto couldn't understand why this man, whom she had only just met today, was giving her advice like this. She calmed her [Kakugan] and looked into his eyes.
Sharp yet clear eyes that proved he had lived a hard life. There was warmth there.
The same kind of warmth as Koma's.
The same kind of warmth as the woman who had once taught Eto what death was.
When the world sometimes turned cold and came crashing down, it was the kind of warmth that made you want to lean on it and cry.
"Who... are you...?"
Koma had lost his father and mother. Even Ukina, the relative he had at least known, was gone now.
That was why Koma treated Eto like a real family member, like a real daughter, and his eyes were warm.
There had been a woman who taught Eto about death with her own life.
The time they had spent together was far too short, but in her final moments she had looked at Eto as if she were truly her own child. Her gaze had been warm too.
And now, once again, a man with warm eyes was looking at Eto.
Who are you to look at me with eyes like that?
Eto was curious, but the man lowered his fedora again.
Even that simple gesture of avoiding her gaze told Eto that whatever he said next would not contain the truth she wanted to know.
"...Let's just say I'm the 'Owl.'"
Owl.
A night hunter that flew silently through the sky and snatched the throat from its prey.
It was a name that suited the man who had moved without a trace and ended up sitting beside Eto.
Perhaps wanting to avoid the subject of himself, the man spoke again.
"You looked troubled... If you don't mind listening to an old man, I'll hear you out."
"..."
She still hadn't completely lost her suspicion of him, but Eto moved closer to the bench and sat down beside him.
It wasn't a rational decision.
More than that, something more fundamental... something etched into her blood seemed to be telling her that this person was safe.
And she also wanted to tell someone about the problem that was squeezing her chest tight.
"...This is something I read in a novel."
But she couldn't reveal everything, so she changed the details a little.
She explained using the plot of a novel she had read once.
"It's a novel with a baby dragon in it. The protagonist happens to find the baby dragon and raises it. But... the world has been waging a brutal war between dragons and humans for a long time. Humans and dragons hate each other."
"Hmm..."
The Owl let out a small murmur.
It was a reaction that seemed both thoughtful and as if he had already read the meaning hidden in Eto's words.
"The protagonist had an old friend. The two of them sometimes fought, but they were really close childhood friends. But that friend hates dragons. He's also part of a knight order that specializes in killing dragons. And one day, that friend finds out the protagonist has been secretly raising a dragon."
"..."
"The friend tries to reject the dragon, but the protagonist tries to protect it. Because of the dragon, a crack forms between them. ...What should be done in a case like that? What should be done so it can end without anyone getting hurt? Should the baby dragon be abandoned after all...?"
"I don't think that's the answer."
The Owl cut Eto off.
In a tone that sounded both admonishing and comforting, he said, "A conclusion where no one gets hurt is difficult. It may be possible in a novel, but reality is a cruel structure. Even if you abandon the baby dragon, you can't avoid someone getting hurt. At that point, the protagonist will surely be the one who suffers."
"..."
"Let me ask you one thing. Why doesn't the protagonist hate dragons?"
"...Because she knows not all dragons are bad. ...There was a dragon that saved her when she was little."
"But the protagonist's friend doesn't know that."
"...!"
It was only a short sentence, but it made her ears ring.
The Owl continued.
"From that friend's point of view, it's only natural that he'd find dragons hard to trust. Since he's part of a knight order that specializes in killing dragons, the dragons he's encountered in his life were probably all the kind that had to be killed. In his heart, the word 'exception' still doesn't exist the way it does for the protagonist."
"..."
With a light hop, Eto jumped down from the bench. The Owl watched her.
"Did your worries go away?"
"They're not gone yet... but I think I found a clue. Thank you."
"Then I'm glad. Wherever you go, don't forget to keep your emotions in check. ...Eto."
"Yes! ...Huh?"
She turned back toward the Owl, wondering, Did I tell him my name?
But the seat where he had been was empty. Like the name Owl itself, he had vanished without a sound, just as silently as he had arrived.
In the end, she still didn't know who he was, but Eto bowed deeply toward the place where he had disappeared, offering her thanks.
Then she slapped both cheeks hard, as if to rally herself.
"If you want to catch a tiger, you have to go into the tiger's den!"
With a face full of resolve, Eto ran off.
Her destination was the CCG branch building. The direction where Hitokawa worked.