A Ghoul Investigator had no choice but to live close to death.
Heroic deaths were nothing more than stories in the media. More often than not, people died in some absurd, sudden way.
He did not think of himself as the protagonist of a story.
He knew that if he kept living like this, someday a truly unavoidable death would come for him.
It was not as though he had never considered retirement.
Maybe not in the past, but these days he sometimes dreamed of a quiet life.
He imagined drawing a pension every month, idly tending bonsai, visiting his son once in a while, and watching the little girl his son was raising grow up.
But he could not do that.
There were too many horrible things in plain sight for him to live a peaceful life.
This case was one of them.
A Ghoul-related victim incident. Something that happened all the time.
What made it unusual was that, unlike most Ghoul cases, this one had not involved the victim being eaten.
And yet the scene was more vicious than any ordinary cannibalistic incident.
When the family saw the returned victim, they broke down in heart-wrenching sobs.
Seeing that, his newly minted assistant and partner, Hajimoto Shinichi, had flown into a rage, and even he had struggled to stay calm.
That was probably why it had ended up like this.
"H-Harima-san..."
Shinichi, drenched in blood, lay on the ground.
Maybe it was because the moon was so bright. Even in the dead of night, in a deserted place with no other light, the spreading blood was clearly visible.
We... had let our emotions get the better of us.
We had chased the Ghoul too hastily and ended up deep inside its territory.
This was surely the price.
"R-run... You might still be able to live... if it's just you..."
"..."
Shinichi, his consciousness fading, did not know the state of his partner.
Takaki Harima.
He thought for a moment. This was the time to make a cold judgment, without letting emotion cloud his mind.
Between himself and Shinichi, which of them had the better chance of surviving?
The answer came quickly.
Then he would prioritize the survival of the one with even a slightly higher chance.
Click.
Harima took a cylindrical metal object from inside his coat.
He pushed one end, the cap came off, and a thin needle was revealed inside.
Thud
He drove it straight into the center of Shinichi's chest.
Shinichi's body jerked, and the light in his eyes began to fade.
He was not dead.
The cylinder contained a special drug that temporarily induced a state of suspended animation, suppressing pulse, breathing, and blood pressure as much as possible.
Thanks to that, the blood Shinichi had been losing dropped noticeably.
If he could hold out like this until rescue arrived, he would probably live.
"So you'd protect your subordinate's life over your own escape? What a splendid sight."
"..."
Having finished the emergency treatment, Harima rose in silence.
The once-white Ghoul Investigator coat was torn and caked with dried blood, until no white remained.
As he stood, something dangled and dragged along with him.
What had spilled from his side was neither torn cloth nor an ornament.
It was Harima's own internal organs.
This was why Harima had judged Shinichi's survival rate to be higher.
His side had been ripped open, his organs spilling out, bone visible in the gap, and with blood pouring away in real time, his face had gone corpse-pale.
Leaving behind injuries that threatened his life, Harima turned around.
At the entrance to the sewer, where moonlight did not reach, someone stood in the shadows.
No figure was visible.
As if it had always been this way, that voice had fused with the mass of darkness and smiled with a fishy, unpleasant curl.
He had learned from his son and that girl that not all Ghouls were evil.
But there were still Ghouls who were, and openly so.
The Ghoul before Harima was, without question, one of the worst among them.
"Honestly, I'm surprised. I never thought you'd slaughter all those Ghouls."
All around Harima, who was currently bleeding out, lay the corpses of numerous Ghouls.
They had all seemed to be part of the same group and had attacked Harima's party at once.
"I gathered followers who shared my ideals, and you wiped them all out by yourself. How tragic. To lose the people who understand me in this world. I'll have to gather more."
Contrary to the words, the voice in the shadows did not sound sad at all. If anything, it sounded annoyed.
In truth, that Ghoul had no sense of camaraderie with others.
Even during the fight, he had tried to use another Ghoul as a shield and pierce through Harima together with Shinichi, and Harima had ended up with his organs torn out while trying to stop it.
"..."
Harima gave the Ghoul no reply, standing there in silence with only his Quinque in hand.
It was less that he had nothing to say and more that he no longer had the strength to speak.
Frankly, it was a wonder he could still stand on both legs.
And yet Harima's gaze did not waver, even with death right in front of him.
The moment he showed even the slightest opening, that Ghoul would rush in to finish him off.
As for himself, that was one thing. He could not allow the partner he had barely managed to save to be harmed too.
Perhaps liking that expression of Harima's, the figure in the shadows extended long, crooked fingers like an ancient tree.
Then he framed Harima's image between the fingers of both hands, as if placing him inside a rectangle.
"Magnificent! Beautiful, too! Your expression right now is absolutely wonderful! The will, the fighting spirit, and the killing intent that refuse to go out even as your breath is about to stop! It's exactly what I wanted. I'd love to tear off your face right now and preserve that expression forever!"
"...If you want it that badly, why don't you come and take it?"
Harima answered in a voice that sounded mostly like boiling blood. He even tilted his head to the left, exposing his throat.
The shadow did not take the bait and merely let out a laugh.
"That would be difficult. Because I'm terrified of you. Humans who do not break in the face of certain death are beautiful, but dangerous! If I handled you carelessly, I might never be able to use these artistic hands again. You look like you can barely lift a single Quinque, but the instant I get close, you'd turn on me and cut my throat before I knew what happened!"
He should not have been here any longer.
Reinforcements summoned by Harima would arrive soon. If he lingered here, he could be hunted down in an encirclement.
And yet the Ghoul did not seem able to make his feet leave, standing there and sighing in regret.
"But it really is a shame... This kind of material doesn't come around often. It will surely be reborn into supreme beauty. But it's such a pain to obtain. What a troublesome thing. Ah! That's it!"
Clap
As if a good idea had struck him, hands met in the darkness.
"Do you perhaps have a child?"
For an instant, Harima's eyes, which had shown nothing but restrained killing intent, wavered.
The shadow did not miss that fleeting change.
"I see, I see! A child doesn't have to resemble their parent, but if it's the child of someone like you, maybe I can look forward to it a little?"
As if he might be able to obtain good material more easily and conveniently, the fishy smile in the shadow deepened.
Then a flash of light swept over him.
KRAAAANG!!!!
A crushing blow, so overwhelming it seemed it would pulverize everything it touched.
It was the giant sword-shaped Quinque Harima had swung.
How a body with its organs spilling out, with empty cavities and fragments of bone exposed, could still produce such force was impossible to tell.
The blue blade not only tore through the darkness where the shadow had been hiding, but deep cracks also spread through the concrete wall and floor beyond it.
But when the sword strike passed, the grinning shadow was no longer there.
He had already fled to a place beyond the reach of the injured Harima.
"Kahahahaha!! Good thing I didn't get close! You were suppressing the pain to the limit and preparing a final strike!!"
The shadow fled to higher ground, away from Harima.
Thanks to that, perhaps, Harima could sense the CCG reinforcements rushing in from far away after noticing his crisis.
Feeling that there was no more time to waste, the shadow bid Harima farewell.
"Unknown Investigator, rejoice in today's meeting! I rather like you! It may be difficult for now, but someday I'll find your child! And if it pleases me, I'll leave them behind as the finest work of art!!"
"...!!"
Harima cursed and tried to chase after the retreating shadow. But not only could he not speak, his legs would not move at all.
He had already spent every last bit of strength he had left.
Harima's body toppled forward вместе with his Quinque.
The warmth drained from his body, and only the strange sensation of his organs scattering as he moved during that final strike remained.
He did not resent death.
He had been prepared for a day like this to come someday.
But with an unresolved danger left behind, he could not easily close his eyes.
That Ghoul had probably thought of Harima as nothing more than easy prey and knew nothing at all.
It would not be easy to reach his son, whom he had not seen in so long it was almost like they had cut ties. But it was not impossible either.
He thought of the victim from this case.
Of that corpse, killed in the most humiliating way possible for the dead, not even eaten for survival.
His own son might end up like that too.
Unlike himself, who had been trained professionally, his son was just an ordinary person. He did not have the strength to endure that filthy madness.
Harima tried to move his fingers, to leave his son's name in blood.
He wanted to send CCG a message that a Ghoul was targeting his son.
But even those fingers would not obey his will. No matter how hard he tried to move them, they did not twitch.
Damn it. Damn it all.
The curse repeated itself over and over in his mind.
Was he really supposed to go meet his wife carrying this despair and misery?
"...Hah."
At that thought, a small laugh escaped his bloodless, cracked lips. It was absurd.
Of all things, what came to mind at the end was that child he had once truly wanted to kill.
And yet in this final dying moment, the only one he could call "hope" was that child.
"Please..."
He repeated it inside his slowly closing eyelids.
The child he had once hated so much.
Please protect my son. Support him so he does not break and fall before filthy malice.
With me dying too, the only one who can do it is you, the only family I have left.