It was a space that looked as if asphalt tar meant for paving roads had been smeared all over it.
In the darkness, a sharp metallic sound rang out eerily through the air thick with an unidentified stench that stung the nose.
It was an unpleasant, chilling noise, like someone sharpening a blade.
The place was filled with a revulsion so strong that neither humans nor animals would want to approach it.
"Hey, have you ever heard the saying, 'Happiness is relative'?"
A voice that did not belong in such a place echoed out.
A woman's voice, cute and sweet as if she were flirting with a lover. It was the kind of voice that could shake the hearts of many men, but paired with that eerie metallic sound, it carried a strange sense of foreboding.
"If you look into something like a happiness index, developed countries score far lower than developing countries, and rich people score far lower than poor people~. Why do you think that is? It's because the higher your position, the wider your 'field of vision' becomes~. You end up with way, way too many things to compare yourself to~. Even if your life is perfectly fine, the moment you see someone living in a better environment than you, you start feeling unhappy without even realizing it~."
Slash.
That sweet voice, along with the metallic scrape, suddenly turned into something else.
"Happiness is a social evil. It makes so many people miserable."
Clang!!
It changed into a chillingly bleak sound.
"Honestly, people shouldn't be happy. What crime did the ones who have to feel miserable because of that happiness commit? If someone gets a good test score and starts celebrating, you should shove them off the stair railing. If someone confesses successfully and gets a lover, you should send all ten of that lover's fingers by parcel. If you see a father and daughter walking home hand in hand, you should run up and cut his throat. You hang people whose faces are twisted in despair right in the middle of the square. Then when people look at them, they'll think, 'Oh my~ that person looks more pitiful than me? Then I must be happy~~.' Isn't it a perfect story, making everyone happy through the misfortune of a few?"
"Mmph—!! Mmmph—!!"
Clunk! Clunk!
In the dark space, another presence sounded besides the woman's voice.
It was a man whose hands and feet were bound to a wooden chair and whose mouth was gagged.
His face was twisted with terror, tears streaming down it, and his desperate struggle to survive only managed to make the wooden chair rattle.
"Ah~ sorry, sorry. I was talking about myself too much. Boring, wasn't it?"
As she said that, the woman picked up the large scissors she had been sharpening.
They were garden shears, but there wasn't a single tree here that needed trimming. Only the man, who was on the verge of foaming at the mouth and fainting from fear, was present.
"Now then..."
She slowly approached the man's sharply sharpened throat.
The black sheen of the scissors reflected the faint light drifting through the darkness, revealing part of the woman's face.
The ominous Ghoul eyes with dark red irises.
"Suffer for everyone's happiness~♥"
Snip!!
"O-oh, oyakodon one...!"
"You seem even skinnier now that you've been promoted to Second Rank, Hitokawa."
The pub where I worked, "Fireworks Bursting in the Belly," was, in name only, a pub; by now it was practically just an ordinary restaurant. Ever since I started working there, the menu had expanded, which was the manager's way of drawing in customers more aggressively.
After coming here and experiencing the manager's amazing oyakodon, Hitokawa had become a regular. He always stopped by on his way home from work.
Still, he'd looked noticeably gaunt lately, so I'd asked out of concern.
"Hahaha... Hajimoto-san got promoted to Special Rank this time and stopped being in charge of me, so they said I'd be stuck doing odd jobs until they found a new partner. I underestimated it. Why do they make me do so much work? It'd be easier to just go outside and catch a Ghoul!"
"You've had it rough too. Here, the manager's oyakodon."
"Ah, thanks. Hm! This perfectly cooked egg! It's enough to make me gasp! As expected, experience is on a different leve—!"
Wham!!!
Hitokawa, who had gotten that far, was knocked backward by a ladle flying out from the kitchen. Even the reflexes of a Ghoul Investigator trained to hunt Ghouls couldn't do anything against such a brutal blow.
"Be careful. The manager's been sensitive about people mentioning her age lately."
"Y-you should've told me that first..."
Hitokawa got up, shaking his head. But because he'd just fallen, a few of the items in his coat pocket spilled onto the floor.
When I bent down to pick them up for him, I saw it.
"..."
I had seen something I really shouldn't have.
It was a photograph. More specifically, a photo of something extremely tasteless.
"Huh? Ah!"
The photo slipped, and when Hitokawa realized it was in my hand, he hurriedly snatched it back.
But the contents of that photo had already been burned far too clearly into my mind. It was that memorable in all the wrong ways.
It was a severed human head.
If it had ended there, I wouldn't have been that shocked. Given my personal circumstances, I was somewhat used to seeing corpses.
But this was on another level. It was enough to trigger the panic disorder that hadn't flared up in a long time.
Fortunately, it was only a mild episode, so it didn't show on the outside, but it was still a shocking photo.
Christmas had ended long ago, but what was in that picture was a Christmas tree of the most disgusting kind.
A man's head, swallowed by despair and terror, had been impaled on top of an oak tree, and his entrails were draped around it like decorations.
Desecration of the dead and blasphemy alike... whichever way you looked at it, it was a grotesque sight that made rage boil up at whoever would pull such a sick joke.
"...You saw it?"
"Thanks. I'm about to get off work and have dinner with Eto, and now I feel like I'm going to throw it all up."
"Ugh. Sorry. It was a photo for investigation records, and I forgot to hand it back in."
"At the very least, never drop something like that in a restaurant."
If he dropped it there, that place would definitely be ruined. There was no way a human with a strong enough mental fortitude to eat happily after seeing that photo existed.
...Wait, Hitokawa. How are you able to eat oyakodon just fine? Is this the class of a Ghoul Investigator?
"By the way, was 'that' done by a Ghoul too? I don't remember seeing it on the news."
Hitokawa asked, pointing at the photo he'd shoved back into his pocket.
"That's the most likely possibility. The neck was cut with something like garden shears, but there are traces showing the entrails were ripped out with brute force. It was such a grotesque case that we're investigating it without telling the media."
After stuffing oyakodon into his mouth, Hitokawa said, "Mmph, mmph..."
"Anyway, everyone's been scrambling to find this 'Artist'... I mean, the culprit. A guy who disappeared years ago has shown up again. A lot of people were assigned to it this time, but in the end, only low-level guys like me who have to run around gathering information are suffering for it."
"Artist?"
"That's what they call this Ghoul. Besides that one just now, he makes all kinds of bizarre works of art, then scatters them along roads people use and disappears. Seriously, if you're a Ghoul, just stay hidden and live quietly—what the hell is this? It's bad enough that people get eaten by Ghouls, but dying just to become some incomprehensible art piece is even more unfair, isn't it? Damn bastard. I'll definitely take him down."
Hitokawa seemed to be seething with anger, because he was gnawing on his chopsticks. He'd said he'd just come back from meeting the families of the Artist's victims.
Perhaps because he understood their feelings, Hitokawa's anger toward the Artist was fierce.
He'd never had a good impression of Ghouls to begin with, but after becoming an investigator and encountering only rotten Ghouls, that impression seemed to have hardened completely.
He didn't show it much on the surface, but every now and then, when he let his anger toward Ghouls slip through, he looked a little like my father used to. That left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Then it happened. A source of energy that would make me forget that bitterness opened the shop door and came in.
"Dad~!"
The moment a little girl spotted me, she leapt through the air and threw herself into my arms.
It was a situation I'd experienced many times, so I lightly caught her and spun once to absorb the impact.
"Welcome back, Eto?"
"Yes~! I'm home!"
Eto, who had been rubbing her face fiercely against my chest like a cat meeting catnip, lifted her head with a bright smile.
Teal hair that reached a little past her shoulders, and a face with soft cheeks that looked both doll-like and marshmallow-like.
Now that she was seven, Eto had recently started to look quite a bit more like a little girl.
Hitokawa, who was about to greet Eto after not seeing her in a while, was slightly startled when he noticed what she was carrying on her back.
"Eto, long time no—huh? A randoseru?"
What Eto was wearing was definitely a bright red randoseru. It was a brand-new one she'd bought not long ago, and it suited her very well.
"I've been going to a nearby elementary school since a few days ago."
"I see. Well, I guess you're old enough for that already."
"But what are you doing here, Mister Hitokawa?"
"I got completely hooked on the oyakodon at this place. It's delicious, want a bite?"
"No!"
Hitokawa held out the bowl of oyakodon, but Eto flatly refused and hid behind me.
Eto was a Ghoul. More precisely, she was a half-Ghoul with human and Ghoul blood mixed fifty-fifty, but the fact remained that she didn't know the taste of human food.
Hitokawa looked hurt by Eto's cold reaction and turned away, hiding his tears.
"Why is Eto so cold to me?"
"You're just the type kids don't like."
"What's that supposed to mean!!"
Eto disliked Hitokawa because he was a Ghoul Investigator.
Since Ghoul Investigators made their living by capturing or killing Ghouls, Eto, with her sharp instincts, naturally had no choice but to keep her distance from him.
I couldn't say that outright, so I'd phrased it vaguely, but it seemed that was what hurt him.
Hitokawa grumbled that nobody was on his side in this world and drained the glass of shochu in one go.
Then, watching Eto head into the kitchen to greet the manager, he muttered, "Seven years old, huh..."
"What's with that look? If you've suddenly awakened to pedophilia, as your friend I'll personally bury you in the ground."
"It's not that, so put down that kitchen knife!! ...I was just thinking time really has passed that fast. It feels like it was just yesterday that you were taking baby Eto to school and causing a scene."
"Hmm. I guess there was a time like that."
"I'm a Ghoul Investigator, you know. It's a job where I never know when I'll die, so I don't plan on getting married... but when I look at you and Eto, I sometimes want to. I want to get married, have kids, and build a family."
"Raising a kid is absolutely not easy. It starts with diapers, and after that there's all kinds of trouble. At least twice a month, they'll definitely give you a headache."
"Haha. I guess so. Still..."
Hitokawa drained his drink again, then looked at me, and then at Eto.
"Still, the two of you look so happy that I keep getting jealous."
"...Is that so?"
"Yeah."
After drinking his shochu, Hitokawa finished off the oyakodon too.
With a light buzz of alcohol and a satisfied fullness in his stomach, he wore a content expression when he suddenly asked, "But you said she gives you trouble more than twice a month? I thought Eto was mature for her age, so I figured she wouldn't cause trouble."
"Lately, she gives me trouble every time she comes back from school. Schools are full of all kinds of people and things to learn, from teachers to students."
"What?"
Apparently not understanding what I meant, Hitokawa frowned with one eyebrow raised. To show him a real example, I called Eto over.
"Eto."
"Yes! You called?"
"Can you tell me what you learned at school today?"
"Today? Today we learned Japanese, English, and gymnastics in PE, and then... my friends taught me this too!"
After saying that, Eto trotted up to me, cleared her throat, and then, as if a switch had been flipped, she made her eyes sparkle and looked at me with a coquettish gesture.
"Welcome home, Dad~? Would you like to eat first today~? Or take a bath first~? Or maybe...♡"
"Okay, that's enough."
I raised one hand to stop Eto's performance and pressed the other against my throbbing temple.
Schools are full of all kinds of people.
It was fine that Eto had made friends her age, but it seemed some of those friends were kids fully loaded with useless knowledge.
Deciding I'd need to visit the school soon and see those little bastards' faces, I turned to look at Hitokawa, who was staring with his mouth hanging open and unable to say anything.
"That's roughly how it's been lately."
"...You've got it rough."
Thanks for understanding.