"If we go any farther, the coast ends. You still haven't picked up Koma's scent?"
"...No."
Eto clenched her fists and answered in a murmur.
They had run along the shoreline for more than three hours, but in the end Eto still couldn't catch Koma's scent, let alone a Ghoul's.
Hitokawa checked the time. The hour hand was nearing 4 a.m.
Daybreak would come in about an hour.
With every passing minute, the chance that Koma was still safe grew thinner. Eto seemed to sense it too, because she gripped the hem of her pants tightly.
"Don't get impatient."
Screech.
Hitokawa took a sharp turn as he spoke.
"If you rush at the important moment, things only get worse. Stay calm. He wasn't out by the coast, but he's definitely somewhere close by. Let's head farther inland and search again."
"...Yes."
It was true, so Eto nodded. But knowing something in her head and actually following through in her heart were two different things, whether you were a Ghoul or a human.
Glancing at her, Hitokawa felt that Eto looked a lot like himself back when he was a rookie.
The anxiety of not knowing whether he could do it. The fear of being forced to witness something he didn't want to see.
If you let yourself be ruled by that, you'd never perform properly in the field.
"Tch...."
Frowning, Hitokawa remembered the senior Ghoul Investigator who had been assigned to him when he was a rookie.
He had been the kind of person who often talked about things unrelated to investigations, but with time Hitokawa had realized it was all to help ease his nerves.
Hitokawa didn't have that man's gift for conversation. But he did have one episode Eto might find interesting.
"A long time ago...."
"?"
It was embarrassing to bring up, but once he saw Eto turn toward him in response, he couldn't stop.
He sighed inwardly and kept going.
"I was actually bullied."
"I'm not interested even a little bit."
The steering wheel slipped, and he nearly slammed into a streetlight.
"You little...!!!"
He had just confessed something pretty serious, and this was the response he got?
Well, this kind of sharp attitude was very Eto, at least.
"Shut up and listen."
"...."
Eto turned her gaze back out the window and resumed searching for Koma's scent.
But her ears were clearly focused on Hitokawa. Seeing that she was listening, he continued.
"I was in third grade. Back then I was small and timid. And in my class there happened to be this one kid with a nasty personality. He was big and strong for an elementary schooler, and a guy like me was the perfect target for him."
"So you were the Nobita getting bullied by Gian?"
"Hold on, I wasn't that pathetic."
It wasn't exactly something a guy who'd been bullied and only endured it in silence should say, but even so, he didn't want to be compared to some idiot who tried to solve everything with other people's tools and nearly destroyed the planet.
Anyway, back to the story.
"Anyway, that guy bullied me all the time. The other kids in class just watched and pretended not to see, but a few of them joined in too. Even if they stuffed dead insects in my desk, even if they threw rotten milk at me from behind, even if they tripped me on purpose while walking by and laughed about it, I could only take it helplessly."
"...."
"That was when Koma transferred to our school."
At the mention of Koma, Eto perked up and turned around. She looked like a rabbit that had ignored humans entirely until it caught the scent of carrots.
"At first I didn't pay much attention. As long as he didn't join the group bullying me, I didn't care. Then Koma saw it. He saw me getting bullied."
"The rest is obvious. My dad stepped in and saved you, Mister Hitokawa?"
Eto puffed out her chest and snorted as if she were proud of it.
She had watched Koma closely from up close for a long time. If it was the Koma she knew, he absolutely would have done that.
Then Hitokawa gave a bitter smile and shook his head.
"No. He called me up to the rooftop and started beating the crap out of me out of nowhere."
"...What?"
Eto blinked hard, as if she'd just heard something impossible.
To put it another way, it was like a rabbit approaching what it thought was a carrot, only to find a bell pepper instead.
As expected of a child who read a lot, she muttered the subject and predicate to herself and came to the conclusion that the person Koma had dragged up to the rooftop and beaten up was definitely Koma.
And the one who got hit was Hitokawa.
"Was it maybe someone with the same name? Or someone with the same first name but a different surname?"
"It was the Takaki Koma we both know."
As Hitokawa let out a dry laugh and answered, Eto fell into confusion.
"M-my dad used to be a delinquent...!!"
"Well, not exactly. Actually, that guy was...."
"Somehow that makes him even cooler!"
"...Hey, wait a second. If it's Koma, then you're happy no matter what, aren't you?"
What was he supposed to do with this kid, whose eyes were sparkling as she freely imagined her father's slightly dangerous past?
Hitokawa was starting to feel that Eto was more dangerous in other ways than she was as a Ghoul.
"So then, what happened to Mister Hitokawa, who got beaten up by my dad after he learned some secret practical martial art, hid it because of a promise with his master, lived a normal life, but transferred schools to keep his distance from others?"
"If you ever have time, try writing a novel. How did you come up with such a ridiculously elaborate story in that short amount of time?"
Maybe through that novel he could get a glimpse into the extraordinary world inside Eto's head.
Anyway, whatever Eto imagined, the real Koma—who obviously hadn't learned some secret practical martial art or anything of the sort—just beat him up out of nowhere.
It was different from the fists he'd been taking all along, the kind that just tried to crush him by brute force.
It was a fist that felt like a provocation, like it was stirring up the hot fire buried deep inside Hitokawa's chest.
Koma said he had no pride. What did he think would change if he just kept getting hit like this?
To Hitokawa, those words felt more humiliating than any insult he'd ever gotten from the kids who bullied him. Unable to swallow his anger, he lashed out and hit Koma in the face.
That was the first time in Hitokawa's life he had ever hit someone.
Once he let his emotions take over, he couldn't stop.
As if daring each other to see who would win, they rolled around in a messy brawl, throwing punches and grappling wildly.
To anyone watching, it was just a fight between kids, but for the two of them it was a desperate struggle as they poured everything out.
Then the fight ended. Neither side had really won; they had simply exhausted themselves and collapsed.
Koma, lying there, asked,
"How was it? Am I really that strong?"
Likewise sprawled out on the ground, Hitokawa shouted back through gritted teeth,
"S-sob... You're not strong at all...! I could beat you...!"
Honestly, he didn't think he could win. He didn't even want to keep fighting. It had just been a reflexive show of stubbornness because he didn't want to lose.
Hearing that, Koma said with satisfaction,
"I'm going to remember that exact line."
"...?"
Leaving the puzzled Hitokawa behind, Koma walked off the rooftop.
And the next day, Koma did something incredible.
"...Something incredible?"
"He beat the hell out of every single one of the guys who had been bullying me."
"...."
Even now, Hitokawa still couldn't forget what he had witnessed that day when he went to school in a miserable mood as usual.
He remembered Koma raising a chair high and smashing it down on the back of the head of the biggest, nastiest classmate who had bullied Hitokawa the worst.
Of course, the big guy screamed and collapsed.
The guy's lackeys got excited and rushed at Koma.
Koma charged back, knocking down one and then another, but when the third tackled him, he couldn't hold his ground and fell to the floor.
The remaining lackeys, sensing an opening, swarmed him like a pack of hyenas and stomped on him.
Even while being battered all over, Koma stubbornly grabbed one of their ankles and yanked him down. Then he bit down with all his strength.
Of course the guy screamed, and Koma climbed onto the fallen body and broke his nose.
That left two of them. One of the remaining boys, blood rushing to his head, pulled a box cutter from his pencil case.
He swung it threateningly at Koma, but Koma simply grabbed the chair he had thrown at the big guy earlier and hurled it back at him as if to say, Go ahead and try.
A box cutter in one hand was nowhere near enough to stop a flying chair.
The boy was knocked down by the chair and dropped the cutter, and Koma stomped on his face as if taking revenge for what he'd just suffered.
The last remaining lackey seemed to lose the will to fight altogether and burst into tears, collapsing on the spot.
A teacher, having heard the commotion, came running, and Koma was dragged away while being loudly scolded.
On the way to the staff room, Koma passed by Hitokawa, who was standing there dazed.
As he passed, he gave Hitokawa a thumbs-up and said,
"See? No big deal, right?"
Koma had fought Hitokawa. And Hitokawa had clearly told him he could win against Koma.
And then Koma had crushed the gang that had been bullying Hitokawa, right in front of him.
"I heard it like this: 'Don't be scared of guys like that. If I can do it, then you can too, since you can beat me.'... That's how Koma's words sounded to me back then."
"...."
"From that day on, the bullying stopped, and I became friends with Koma. Or rather... I should say I just followed him around one-sidedly? I admired him."
"...."
"Everyone knows bullying is bad, and everyone knows you should stop it when you see it. But knowing that and actually being able to do it are different, right? Everyone just talks about it in their heads, but no one actually acts. And even fewer people go all the way down into the hell where the bullied kid is and pull him back up themselves. That's why I admired him. The way he was willing to take risks to help someone."
From that point on, Hitokawa had started aiming to become a Ghoul Investigator.
To admire someone meant wanting to become like them. Hitokawa thought the job most like the Koma he had seen back then was a Ghoul Investigator. Someone who threw themselves into danger and protected civilians from Ghouls.
"...Thank you."
"...Huh?"
Hitokawa thought he must have misheard.
If he hadn't, then Eto had definitely just said thank you. How many years had it been since he'd heard those words from her?
"Thank you. For telling me about Dad and Mister Hitokawa. Thanks to that, I feel a lot less tense."
Eto was smiling.
As if she were glad to hear that story. As if she were happy to hear it.
There was a smile there, pure and kind.
"W-well, it was nothing."
Hitokawa turned his head away, embarrassed.
For all he knew, that kid Eto was going to grow up into a beauty who'd make plenty of men cry.
And when that time came, all sorts of weird guys would start circling her, so he'd help Koma beat them up too... That was as far as his thoughts got before Hitokawa snapped back to reality.
"What am I thinking? Eto's a Ghoul! Did Koma's doting-father disease rub off on me!?"
While he was shaking his head and trying to clear his mind, Eto said,
"Since you told me a story, I'll tell you one of my own. This was back when Dad and our pet Toto were at home...."
And then Eto began unfolding her story like she was reading a fairy tale....
Flash…!!!
She raised her right eye, blazing with a burning [Kakugan], and shouted,
"Stop!!!"
"?!!"
Startled, Hitokawa slammed on the brakes. It was lucky there were no cars out at dawn; if this had been broad daylight, it would have ended in a major accident.
He stopped the car in a hurry and turned his head. Eto's entire mood had changed in an instant, and she was glaring fiercely in one direction.
Seeing that, Hitokawa knew it at once.
"...Found it."
The faint scent of Koma's blood in the air.
They'd found the bastards' hideout!