"......."
...First, calm down. Count the primes slowly.
"2, 3, 5, 7, 11...."
With every number she counted, Eto's steps carried her forward. By the time she reached 19 in her head, she had arrived at the place.
The ground at Eto's feet was stained dark red with blood. It looked old; the surface had dried and flaked away.
"34... 37...."
She knelt and reached out to the bloodstain.
When she pressed down with her finger, the damp blood trapped beneath the crusted surface seeped out.
A seductive scent of blood rose, prickling the tip of her nose.
"57.... 59...."
She stared quietly at the blood on her trembling finger.
In her head, she clung desperately to the numbers. If she didn't, she felt like she'd lose her mind.
Then, slowly, very slowly, she brought the finger to her mouth.
"71.... 73.... 79...."
A strange-colored saliva. Wrapped in that saliva, a shy tongue carefully welcomed her finger.
The blood on her finger was branded onto her tongue like a mark.
"89.... 97…9...77…054762119420820782...!!!!!!"
She had never taken drugs before. But if someone did, was this what it felt like?
The dizzying sensation, the vertigo, the pleasure, as though her brain were melting. Thorns seemed to spread from the base of her tongue and seize control of every nerve in her body.
Even the prime numbers she had been counting to keep herself calm had twisted into an incomprehensible string of random digits.
She could feel her right eye burning.
With her head bowed low, her face hidden behind her hair so that only darkness showed, the dark red [Kakugan] in Eto's face moved vividly, glowing in the gloom.
There was none.
Nowhere was there any sign of Dad.
Nowhere was there any trace of Dad's presence.
Only a frightened kitten, having seen something it shouldn't have, was peeking at Eto and crying pitifully.
The front door stood wide open. Clear traces of Dad's blood remained on the floor, and that blood trail continued out past the doorway before cutting off.
It wasn't hard to guess what had happened.
"Whose doing is thisssssssssssssssssssss――――――――――!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Eto's emotions, no longer able to maintain any calm, erupted into fury.
Ripping through her clothes, wing-shaped [Kagune] burst from her right shoulder. It stretched out like a line, and Eto's figure vanished outside the house.
"Damn it! Why can't I get through to the standby teams!!"
As Hitokawa sprinted down the street, he was seized by the urge to hurl his phone away.
There was no contact at all with the three teams assigned to monitor the area around Koma's house in advance. Not one team, but all three. If none of them could be reached, something had definitely happened.
Running the fastest route toward Koma's house, Hitokawa glanced at the two sheets of paper in his hand.
One was a photo taken by police CCTV of the theft of a [Q Bullet].
A female culprit with her face masked had somehow infiltrated the police armory.
The safe storing the [Q Bullet] had been broken open, and the woman had been caught on camera holding the stolen pistol in one hand while making a V sign at the CCTV like some kind of lunatic.
The other sheet was a composite sketch made from witness statements about the cleaner who had disguised herself to get in.
Individually, the features looked different, but taken as a whole—and especially with that bizarre behavior toward the CCTV—it was unmistakably someone Hitokawa knew.
"Shinaoto Minami! I knew something felt off from the moment we first met!!"
The pistol Minami had stolen, along with the [Q Bullet], had been delivered to Koma under Koma's father's name.
That alone didn't reveal her goal, but it was enough to tell him that approaching Koma had not been a coincidence.
By the time he was gasping from the sprint, Koma's house finally came into view.
Racing through the quiet residential district, empty because it was daytime and everyone was probably out working, Hitokawa looked up at the roof of Koma's house drawing closer.
Then a small shadow leaped onto that roof.
"...Huh?"
At first, he thought it was a bird.
But what bird could fly with only one wing? What bird could streak through the air with such an ominous dark red glow?
...And, more importantly, what bird would charge at a human at nearly supersonic speed???
"What the hell is that?!!"
Hitokawa yanked open the metal case in panic.
As the [Quinque] sprang out and assembled itself, the shadow of the flying object, now rapidly expanding before his eyes, came crashing down on him.
KRAAAANG―――!!!!!
He barely managed to block it with the wing-shaped greatsword, Iwawashi, but the impact sent Hitokawa's legs flying off the ground.
Thud!
"Ghk!"
Flung into a nearby wall, Hitokawa groaned as a sharp pain shot through his back.
Breathing was difficult, but he couldn't let go of his arms.
If he loosened his strength for even a moment, he'd be crushed by the monstrous force of the brat pinning him down along with the greatsword.
Hitokawa grimaced and looked at the Ghoul who had attacked him without warning: Eto.
The sharp little girl who had come to see him less than an hour ago, telling him she wouldn't kill him but would fight him, was gone.
All that remained was a Ghoul baring her fangs and growling like a beast.
He didn't know why only one of a Ghoul's [Kakugan] had surfaced.
But both her Ghoul eye and human eye were bloodshot with rage.
The [Ukaku] blazing behind Eto's back like a sheet of fire seemed to reflect her current mental state.
"You little brat, did you show your true colors, or did you just suddenly lose your mind? Which is it?"
"Shut up, shut up, shut uuuup!!! Where did you take Dad!! Where did you take our Dad, you bastarddddddddddd――――――――――??!?!!!"
Grrrk...!!
The arm bracing the greatsword like a shield began to buckle under the pressure of the [Ukaku] blasting out like a booster.
At this rate, he might really get crushed.
"What the hell is this power!? There's no way a ten-year-old Ghoul can put out this kind of force!"
Pure output alone put her beyond B-rank, close to A-rank.
As Hitokawa struggled through the cold sweat, he quickly noticed something strange in Eto's words.
"W-wait! What do you mean, where did I take Koma!? Why are you asking me that! What happened to him!?"
"Don't play dumb!! Dad disappeared!! There was blood left on the floor!! And the presence of the investigators who were around Dad vanished too!! Anyone can see he was forcibly taken away to separate him from me!!!"
"Don't be ridiculous!!! I haven't told anyone your identity yet!! I never asked the investigators to do anything like that either!! If something happened to Koma, then the culprit is someone else!!"
"...!!"
The pressure of her unrestrained rage lessened. If he wanted, he could swing the greatsword and knock Eto away now, but he held back.
If he did that now, she'd think he was attacking her and there'd be no conversation at all.
"Then who is it? Who took Dad!?"
"Shinaoto Minami."
"!"
For a moment, the image of Minami as she had last appeared flashed through Eto's mind.
That woman who had left Eto with a sneering remark before disappearing along with a foul train of thought.
"And the one who sent the pistol and [Q Bullet] to Koma was that woman too. I've got proof. That woman approached Koma from the very beginning with some scheme in mind!"
"...."
Tap!
Eto threw herself off Hitokawa's greatsword.
Leaping back and landing on the ground, Eto asked with eyes that had regained a little calm, "...Where is that woman?"
"We're going to find her. Starting now."
"And why should I trust you?"
Hitokawa's eyebrow twitched. This brat was getting awfully insolent.
"What are you going to do if you don't? Go storming around in that state and search everywhere?"
"If it's necessary, I won't hesitate."
Her tone had returned to normal, but her emotions were still impossible to contain; both her [Kakugan] and [Kagune] were blazing as Eto spoke.
Hitokawa was dumbfounded.
"Why don't you just make yourself the target of every investigator in this city? I'll bet my arm that your life runs out before you find Koma."
"...."
"I know how ridiculous it sounds to trust the words of someone who doesn't trust you. But you're in the same position—I'm sure you don't have a better plan either."
Click, click.
Hitokawa folded the greatsword and slid it back into the metal case.
Putting away his weapon in front of a Ghoul—no matter how much calm he had lost, Eto understood what that meant.
"This is an emergency. While we look for Koma, I'll be here not as a Ghoul Investigator, but as your father's friend. So for now, follow my lead."
"...."
Eto glared at Hitokawa for a while, then finally nodded and retracted her [Kagune].
"...."
My stomach feels sick. The back of my head is throbbing.
I moved my hand to rub the back of my head.
Clink.
But before my hand could reach it, an irritating metallic sound cut off the movement of my arm. Frowning, I turned my head.
There were shackles on my wrist.
Old, rusted shackles linked to a chain and fixed to the wall.
"Oh? You're awake already? You can sleep a little longer if you want."
"...Shinaoto."
"I told you to call me Minami~."
In a dark, damp room with not a single window in sight, Minami—the culprit who had put me in this state—was reading a book by candlelight.
The candlelight caught her eyes as she looked at me.
Black pupils, red irises. Eyes with the traits of a Ghoul.
I said calmly to her, while she wore an expectant face that seemed to ask, "Surprised? Surprised?"
"What kind of pathetic Ghoul cosplay is this?"
"...Huh? How did you know?"
Minami blinked, apparently surprised that I had seen through it so easily, and then opened her mouth.
"I can tell just by the look in your eyes. My body reacts on its own to that kind of gaze—the kind that looks at me like I'm food."
Touching the fang-shaped scar on my right arm, I said that.
Then I jerked my chin toward the steel pipe standing in the corner of the room. The same pipe that had personally bashed my head in.
"And Ghouls don't use steel pipes. It's easier and more convenient for them to smash a human skull with their bare hands."
"Hmm~ I see. You know quite a lot, don't you?"
Minami touched her eye with a finger, sounding disappointed that she hadn't been able to fool me.
The colored contact lens used to change the eye color slipped out.
"What exactly are you? So the part about being a company employee was all a lie?"
"Mm? No, that part isn't a lie~. It's true that I'm the lowest-ranking regular employee at the company. It's just not a normal company."
Plop. Plop.
As she smiled brightly, a wet liquid dripped from above my head.
I looked up, and immediately regretted it.
"Kehahahahaha!!!"
There was a Ghoul hanging like a spider between the ceiling and the wall, suspended by long limbs.
His face was hidden behind an insect-shaped mask.
Was this the one? The Ghoul who had attacked me and Hitokawa last time. This was the first time I'd seen him with my own eyes while fully conscious.
Drooling something that might have been saliva while letting out a grotesque laugh toward me, he was unsettling enough to make even someone as mentally hardened as me feel pressure.
"That's our company's deputy manager~. We happened to run into each other on the way back to the office. Looks like he was in the middle of a meal. Since we ran into each other by chance, he helped with the kidnapping~."
"...Deputy manager?"
"Yep. Deputy manager. Don't worry. Even if he looks and acts like that, he's the kindest person in our company. We also have section chiefs, team leaders, and assistant managers below him. I think it's been a while since anyone's seen the president's face?"
I was briefly confused.
So what was this thing she called a company...
"A company run by Ghouls?"
"Yep, correct~! And I'm the only woman in it, as well as the lowest-ranking employee. I'm Shinaoto Minami, a 'human who wants to become a Ghoul'~! Yay~ applause~!"
"Kehahaha!"
Clap, clap.
When Minami clapped, the bastard on the ceiling—the deputy manager—clapped along too. What the hell were these people...
My mind going blank wasn't due only to the wound on the back of my head.