A spray of blood bursts out.
The agony of having an arm severed, and the sense of loss that follows, surges up through the veins and optic nerves and slams into the brain.
The brain, struck as if from behind without warning, spews out adrenaline and rage in equal measure.
The section chief's eyes were instantly dyed a dark, blood-red color.
He wanted to rush in and rip that bastard's throat out right then and there, pain from the severed arm be damned, but the data labeled "experience" piled up in some corner of his mind kept him rational.
Charging in because he'd taken a hit was the thinking of a nobody worse than a mayfly.
"Chief! Your arm...! That son of a bitch!!"
Take that assistant section chief, for example.
Seeing his superior get hit, the assistant section chief had started to lunge forward in a rage, but the chief stopped him with his one intact hand.
"Forget me. Watch your back."
"Huh?"
"Ah, damn it. Caught."
Kaaang—!!!
The clash, almost metallic in tone, echoed wildly as it slammed against the alley walls.
It was the sound of Hitokawa's Quinque, as he leapt down from a nearby building window to launch a surprise attack alongside Eto, colliding with the Kakuhou the assistant section chief had drawn out just in time.
In the darkness before dawn, the assistant section chief recognized Hitokawa's white suit and widened his eyes.
"A Ghoul Investigator?!"
"Tch."
When the Quinque he'd brought down with the intent to split a skull was blocked, Hitokawa kicked against the Kakuhou walling him off and flipped backward.
Landing on the ground, he naturally took position blocking the alley entrance.
It became a pincer formation, with Eto in front and Hitokawa behind.
Neither of them paid the other any mind; all their killing intent was directed at the one in front of them.
Realizing the two were working together, the assistant section chief spat out a curse.
"What the hell kind of bullshit is this! Why the hell is a Ghoul Investigator cooperating with a Ghoul?!"
"Don't say it, asshole. I'm already going crazy because this is messing with my sense of identity or whatever."
Taat!
Hitokawa, crouched low as if carrying a greatsword on his back, twisted his body and swung the Quinque with all his strength.
The assistant section chief blocked it and counterattacked, but Hitokawa slipped neatly out of range and swung again.
Kagaang!!! Kaaang!!
The sound of Quinque and Kakuhou colliding rang out again and again.
Even with the fight between his subordinate and the Ghoul Investigator happening right behind him, the chief didn't spare them a glance, much less move to help.
Though he was said to have developed a taste for toying with human corpses, the chief had once been a Ghoul who'd been through hell and back.
He'd survived Ghoul infighting and Ghoul Investigator raids alike, and that had sharpened his instincts in this area. He was confident he wouldn't get blindsided anywhere, at least.
In fact, he had sensed Hitokawa's sneak attack in advance.
But for some reason, he hadn't noticed Eto's attack until the exact moment it struck.
It had been a surprise attack that concealed not only sound and wind, but even killing intent, like an owl swooping down to snatch a neck from a prey animal that had let its guard down after making a catch.
It had probably been aimed at his arm to save the girl whose head was about to be crushed, but the question of whether he could have avoided instant death if she'd aimed for his throat from the start wouldn't leave his mind.
"...What are you?"
On the outside, she was so small she could be called a dwarf, and her voice was unmistakably that of a child no matter how he listened to it.
If the face behind that Owl mask really belonged to a kid and not an adult, then what was that technique just now?
His long experience was telling him.
The one he needed to watch wasn't the Ghoul Investigator behind him, but the unknown Ghoul in front of him.
"..."
Eto did not answer the chief's question. Instead, she set the girl she had just saved from the assistant section chief down on the ground.
The girl was still blinking, not yet able to grasp what had happened.
But she clearly understood that she had almost died a moment ago, because both her hands were trembling faintly.
Eto's hand, reaching out from beneath her cloak, gently covered the girl's.
"It'll be okay."
Maybe it was because the voice belonged to a girl her own age. Maybe it was because of the warmth that passed through that hand.
The girl's trembling subsided.
"Could you keep your eyes closed for me?"
A light, gentle request, like asking a friend for a favor.
The girl squeezed her eyes shut as if to say she understood. Eto stood up and turned back to the assistant section chief.
"Just in case, I'll ask. Do you know a human woman who looks like she's got a few screws loose, and a Ghoul wearing an insect-shaped mask?"
At that, the chief's eyebrows twitched.
There were people who matched the image Eto had described perfectly.
"Oh...? So you know our comrades?"
"I'm not really interested in those bastards. What I want to know is the man they must have brought with them."
"Hmm?"
Sensing a strange heat in Eto's voice, the chief furrowed his brow.
The gap between the man named Takaki Koma that Minami had captured and the situation he himself was in was being rapidly bridged.
"I see. So that's it. That Minami bastard. I thought he'd brought back some pretty decent material, but now that I look at it, it was just a nuisance. Damn it."
"Where is that man?"
"Who knows. I'm not the one in charge of turning him into a 'work of art' this time. He might be getting dismantled piece by piece as we speak."
"..."
After hearing the chief's words, Eto fell silent.
The chief settled into his stance and finished preparing to draw his Kakuhou. If Eto lost her reason and charged in after that provocation, he intended to counter immediately and inflict a fatal wound.
And just as he'd expected, Eto's blood was boiling now.
Her right eye and the area around her shoulder burned hot, as if they might catch fire at any moment, and she wanted nothing more than to show her anger right away.
And then...
"...?"
The chief narrowed his eyes in confusion.
The heat in Eto that had seemed ready to erupt just moments ago suddenly cooled in an instant.
It was as if magma that had been about to surge upward had been blocked by a massive glacier and gone cold.
Perhaps that was only natural.
What she was about to do now was Eto's very important "first."
"Dad..."
Eto closed her eyes and pictured Koma, who had vanished.
What she was about to do now was something he would never accept. He would be sad. She knew that much.
Eto was about to do something bad. She understood that clearly.
"What's bad about it?"
Another emotion whispered to her like that.
She had known for a long time that this was the voice of her "self as a Ghoul."
"The bad ones are the people who messed with us while we were just living without hurting anyone. It's the world that took Dad away from us. What's wrong with taking back what was stolen?"
But Eto rejected that whisper.
If you do something bad, you should be punished. It was an obvious truth, and also one nobody wanted to follow.
But she had to be punished. Because that was the path for no one else but herself.
"I'll be punished."
She would save Dad, and she would definitely be punished by Dad.
"That's the difference between 'me as a Ghoul' and 'me as a human.'"
The whisper was no longer audible.
It would be fine.
Even if she ended up staining her hands with countless lives, even if that led Eto down the wrong path.
If it was Dad, he would surely scold her for it.
So she could be at ease.
At ease... and kill them.
Fwoooooosh!!!
"!?!?"
As if striking at a blind spot, Eto's [Ukaku] burst forth without warning in a shape like flame.
At the same time, Eto threw the object she had been holding in one hand.
It turned out to be the chief's arm, which she had severed a moment ago.
"As if this matters!!"
The chief swatted the arm away with contempt. He wasn't the kind of man who'd built up this much experience only to be fooled by a cheap trick and leave an opening.
After throwing the arm, Eto charged in, using the erupting [Ukaku] as a booster.
It was a terrifying speed, difficult to react to unless you were a Ghoul.
But the chief responded to the movement and drew out his Kakuhou.
His Kakuhou was [Koukaku], a type that held the advantage over Eto's [Ukaku].
[Ukaku] had tremendous mobility, but it lacked the force to break through a solid shield like [Koukaku]. He intended to stop Eto's movement once and then pierce her heart.
Taat!
However, Eto's body, which had been rushing straight in, suddenly veered diagonally and flew toward the alley wall.
She kicked off the wall with both feet and changed direction like a billiard ball rebounding off the cushion.
"She's aiming for my blind spot? Not a chance!"
He folded one of the [Koukaku] tentacles, turning it into a shield that protected his back. He had a perfect countermeasure for attacks aimed from the blind spot.
But Eto ignored him and passed right by.
She leapt over the chief's head, kicked off the opposite wall again, and shot forward like an arrow.
In a direction completely different from where the chief stood.
At that moment, the chief sensed that something was wrong.
Puhuk――!!!
The sound of flesh being torn, of muscle and bone being forced apart.
That sound froze the time around them for an instant.
The chief, who had been defending himself from Eto's attack, and Hitokawa, who had been fighting hard and swinging his Quinque, both stood there speechless, mouths half-open.
"Cough...!! Wh-what the hell...!!!"
The assistant section chief spat blood from his mouth and stared in disbelief at the small hand protruding from his chest.
It was unmistakably Eto's hand.
Her hand had pierced straight through his heart, tearing out through his chest.
The assistant section chief, too absorbed in his fight with Hitokawa, had failed to evade Eto's strike. No, he hadn't even thought an attack would come from that direction.
Pshuk!!
With a sound like air escaping, Eto's hand was pulled free.
The assistant section chief staggered as if resisting the fate closing in on him, but before long his knees buckled and he collapsed into the pool of blood he had made himself.
The life drained from his twitching body in an instant.
"So this is my 'first kill'...?"
Eto looked at the blood gathered on her hand.
An unpleasantly muted red.
A temperature of about 36 degrees Celsius.
The scent of blood tickling the tip of her nose.
A thin, metallic taste.
All of it was leaving, and the body of the one who had been alive met death.
As for Eto's impression of it, a line from a novel she had once read came to mind.
"'A life lived by one person is so heavy, and yet its end is so light'..."