Eto and Hitokawa.
Those two had always been on bad terms.
Mostly because Eto disliked him, while Hitokawa kept trying to get closer to her.
I had always watched them, so I knew.
Eto didn't actually hate Hitokawa that much.
Eto was a mature child. There were times she even hid her hunger because she was worried about me.
Because she always put me before herself, she never said when something was painful, and she never showed when she disliked something.
But with Hitokawa, that was the one exception. Only in front of him did Eto let her dislike show.
Part of it was caution, of course, but she also knew he was someone she could show her true feelings to.
The mature Eto only turned back into a child her own age when she was with Hitokawa.
That was heartwarming, but it also made me jealous of Hitokawa for being the one who drew that side of Eto out.
So I left the two of them alone.
One was a Ghoul, the other a Ghoul Investigator.
Even knowing they could never truly mix, looking at them made me believe that maybe, someday, the "foolish fantasy" my father used to talk about might become real.
I wanted to protect their relationship a little longer.
So that even if Hitokawa eventually learned Eto's true nature, their bond could still remain intact.
But not yet.
Until Eto could truly open her heart to Hitokawa, and until Hitokawa could face Eto's "essence," this had to stay a secret.
We were moving forward, slowly but surely. It only needed a little time, and a little trigger....
But before that moment could arrive, fate mocked my wish and shattered the peace of everyday life over something so trivial it was almost insulting.
Thrown into disaster before I was ready, my mind went blank with confusion.
Still, I forced my brain to work even though it didn't want to move, desperately searching for a way out.
This wasn't the first time Eto's identity had been exposed to an investigator, so maybe I'd built up some resistance to the shock. Back when it happened to my father, didn't it also get exposed all of a sudden, like a blow to the back of the head?
The bad part, compared to my father's case, was that there was nowhere to run.
The investigators hiding near our house to catch the "insect-mask Ghoul" could all turn their blades this way.
The only small mercy was.... unlike my father, I could "try talking."
"...Eto, go wait outside."
"Dad...?"
I said it to Eto, who had cautiously poked her head into the room.
Before the anxious Eto could say anything else, Hitokawa's cold voice cut her off again.
"Stop. Don't take another step."
Gasp! Eto flinched, her shoulders jerking as she stared at Hitokawa with wide eyes.
It must have felt strange. The Hitokawa Eto knew was a guy who never lost his warmth, no matter how coldly she treated him.
But now he was different.
The current Hitokawa was far colder than the one Eto usually dealt with.
That made sense. Eto's coldness had been caution toward a "potential enemy," while Hitokawa's coldness was caution toward an "enemy standing right in front of him."
He didn't have his Quinque with him, probably because it would have been a hindrance while hiding.
If he had brought it and equipped it, the atmosphere would have turned even uglier.
Watching Hitokawa try to block Eto from backing away, I said, "Let her go. It's not like she has anywhere to run anyway."
"...."
"Eto. Go to the living room and wait with Minami. Understand?"
From Hitokawa's silence, I took that as agreement and sent Eto out.
Eto seemed reluctant, but after I kept gesturing for her to go, she finally dragged her feet out of the room.
Thud.
The door closed, and only Hitokawa and I remained in the room.
The silence was uncomfortable.
It was probably the first time since we'd first met at elementary school that we'd been this quiet around each other.
I scratched my head and thought about where to even begin.
"Yeah."
Right. Answering that first question would be necessary if I wanted this conversation to go anywhere.
"...Eto is a Ghoul."
I admitted it honestly. At this point, after he'd clearly seen Eto's [Kakugan], any clumsy evasion would only make things worse.
So I laid everything bare. There was nothing else I could do.
Now it was Hitokawa's turn to react. That would decide everything.
"......"
Scrape, scrape.
With his head lowered, Hitokawa scratched at his hair after hearing my answer. Looking frustrated, he roughly raked a hand through it, then....
BOOM!!!
He slammed his fist into the wall.
The wallpaper tore and the surface caved in. Hey, don't wreck someone else's house.
When he pulled back his fist and looked up, his face was twisted tight. Not from the pain of punching the wall barehanded.
"Why!! Why is that!! Why is Eto a Ghoul...!! Why are you raising a Ghoul...!!! For seven years!! All this time!!"
His words were a mess.
He'd barely managed to keep his composure, but he was still shocked enough to be completely thrown off.
Eto, who had been getting along with him all this time, was the Ghoul he was supposed to eliminate.
A being that hid in society, lurked in the shadows, and preyed on humans.
A social evil that had to be wiped out.
That was Eto.
The girl who always smiled brightly, who was strangely mature and yet still childlike, who only ever showed her temper around Hitokawa, and who loved her dad to death.... that girl was the Ghoul Hitokawa himself was supposed to eliminate.
This was different from what happened with my father.
Me, Eto, Hitokawa.
The seven years of "trust" we had built together were by no means small.
But even more than that....
Hitokawa had spent more than twenty years with "distrust" toward Ghouls carved into him.
Caught between that trust and that distrust, he was thrown into confusion.
"Why the hell!! Why!!"
Bang!!BOOM!!!Thud!!
His fist kept hammering the wall without pause.
Unable to watch any longer, I grabbed his arm and stopped him.
"Enough. You've already torn the skin off your hand."
Thanks to that, the wall was turning into an abstract painting in blood. I didn't want to fall asleep every night staring at that kind of art.
"Shut up!! Don't worry about it!!"
Still, maybe he'd finally managed to cling to some reason, because he stopped punching himself against the wall.
Instead, he glared at me fiercely.
"Why did you lie to me?"
"I'm sorry. I had no choice."
"Eto's identity is one thing, but the part I can't understand most is you raising a Ghoul!! Shouldn't you be the one person who can never forgive Ghouls!? Both your parents were killed by Ghouls...!!"
Grip...!!!
"...!!"
Hitokawa shut his mouth.
Before he could finish, my hand tightened around his arm.
Something stirred deep in my chest.
An emotion I couldn't show in front of Eto. It always crawled out whenever this topic came up.
"Don't bring that up."
It was an emotion called hatred.
I was human too. I couldn't be completely free of emotion.
It had been quite a while, but I still couldn't shake it off.
My feelings toward the Ghoul that had taken my parents' lives.
But Hitokawa was mistaken about one thing.
"Eto is different. The Ghoul who killed my parents and the Ghoul I trust are separate things."
The Ghouls I hate are individuals, not a whole group.
There were Ghouls like Mister Kuzen, and there were Ghouls who just played at being police.
I wasn't stupid enough to make the mistake of thinking all Ghouls were evil just because they were Ghouls.
I let go of Hitokawa's arm. My handprint was clearly left on his forearm.
Hitokawa stumbled back, unable to say anything.
In that short span, I made it clear that I had not forgotten my parents' killer.
That was exactly why he was even more confused.
He couldn't understand why I would protect Eto, a Ghoul, after being hurt by Ghouls myself.
He leaned against the bloodstained wall and slid down to the floor.
"Huff... huff... ...explain."
A moment later, Hitokawa seemed to regain some of his composure and forced out a single word.
He wanted an explanation.
I felt relieved that he was at least willing to hear me out.
The worst possible outcome I could imagine right now was him lunging at me to kill me without a word, just like my father's case.
Having cleared the first hurdle, I sat down across from him and faced him.
Then I opened my mouth, thinking about how to explain it in a way Hitokawa would actually understand.
"There was a Ghoul named Kuzen...."