Every living thing has its own color.
And the more vivid that color is, the more dangerous it tends to be.
Mushrooms, toads, snakes—those are good examples. The brighter their colors, the more potent their poison.
That eye-catching brilliance is a warning.
A warning that if you try to eat it, you may die the moment you do.
A creature with no sharp claws to tear skin, no powerful jaws to crush bone survives by teaching predators how dangerous it is.
The same trait can be found in humans, especially Ghoul Investigators.
They always wear white coats.
Compared to creatures that actually carry poison, the color is plain, but that coat is a warning too.
Other Ghouls sneer at them and call them Doves, but they are more than dangerous enough to Ghouls. Kill one, and they come swarming in a flock to wipe out the Ghoul responsible.
The coat that symbolizes a Ghoul Investigator carries the message, "Touch us, and you die."
Kill an Investigator, and a movement to kill that Ghoul will inevitably begin, inflicting heavy damage as if they had swallowed poisoned food.
I learned that through experience as well.
When I got cocky about my own strength, I ran wild without knowing anything. Only after I was nearly killed by the extermination squad assembled to take me down did I finally understand how dangerous Ghoul Investigators were.
After barely surviving that, I no longer eat anything with strong "color."
And that applies to more than just Ghoul Investigators.
When you observe human society, there are certain kinds of people.
Humans with bright, vivid colors radiate a strong presence even when placed among a hundred others.
Humans with dark, faint colors pass through the world as if they are barely there, and if they suddenly disappear one day, hardly anyone notices.
When you want to live quietly, there is nothing better to use as food than those kinds of humans.
Just as I avoided brightly colored mushrooms and hunted the dull ones for food, I had hunted humans with faint colors all this time.
And yet... how did it end up like this?
Thud!
"Keh...!!!"
I tried to scream. But I couldn't.
The grotesque blade that had burrowed into my throat and blocked the airway my breath needed silenced me completely.
"Kh... aagh!!"
With a desperate swing of my arm, I barely knocked away the blade that had been a moment from severing my throat completely.
The sword was flung aside.
An opening appeared.
Not wasting that chance, I swung my other arm at him.
Whoosh...!
But all that answered was the absurdly plain sound of air being cut.
Only then did I realize my outstretched arm was shorter than usual.
Thud!
Something fell a little ways off to the side. A familiar shape.
I couldn't believe that what should have been attached to my arm had suddenly dropped over there.
Had the blade I thought I'd just knocked away not been flung back at all, but moved to cut off my other arm?
Fwoosh—!!!
"H, hiiiik!!!"
That short rush of air had never sounded so horrifying.
Instinctively, I raised my one remaining arm into a defensive stance.
Slash!!
The razor edge passed by.
My reaction had not been late, and yet I still couldn't stop the line of death from carving across my face.
By the time I raised my arm to block, the blade had already gone past.
The blood spraying in a straight line along both of my eyes proved it.
"Aaaaghhh!!!!"
Once my sight was taken, the fear doubled.
I rolled across the ground in a disgraceful heap, with no time to think about pride.
Screaming, I shoved myself along the ground with all four limbs in a frantic scramble.
This couldn't be happening.
This should not be happening.
It was supposed to be an ordinary hunt.
Then why?
Why did I have to feel this much terror toward prey like that?
"What the hell am I fighting?!"
He had clearly been an ordinary student on his way home from school.
A quiet, taciturn, utterly ordinary boy with no particular presence... a boy with "faint color."
The moment that boy stepped into a deserted alley, the hunt began.
And now I was like this.
Without even understanding what had been done to me, I had to crawl away like a pathetic worm.
Bang!
I hit something. A wall?
Where was I? Where could I run to survive?
Step. Step.
In a world soaked in darkness, only those light footsteps rang out dryly.
Not even knowing where to go, I pressed my back against the wall and shouted, "D-don't come any closer!! I said don't come any closer!!"
Step. Step. Step.
The sound did not stop.
Like a machine running a preset program, it simply walked straight toward me.
"Kraaaagh!!"
With a beastlike roar, I lunged toward the sound.
I had lost my sight, but a Ghoul's senses far surpassed a human's. With my remaining four senses, I could still pinpoint the other's position.
He probably hadn't expected this either. This was my last chance.
He was still just a human. If I could land one hit, I would win!
With that thought, I thrust out my fingers, sharp as a spear.
Puhk!!
I was pierced.
Not by the terrifying shape that had been tormenting me.
A cold blade had pierced my heart with perfect accuracy.
"Ugh... ah..."
That was only the beginning.
Immediately after, both shoulders, both legs, and even my neck were torn apart in an instant, as if someone had disassembled a mechanical doll, and my body rolled across the ground in pieces.
As my severed head rolled along the floor, sight barely returned to one eye. It must have healed quickly because only that part had been lightly cut, but once my neck had already been torn off, it was meaningless.
Still, with that one remaining eye, I took in the face of the one who had killed me.
It was that boy after all.
An expressionless face, a mouth sealed in silence.
In one hand, he held a sword-shaped Quinque, the kind used to butcher me. With the other, he was straightening his crooked glasses.
What was even more ridiculous was that while my body had been reduced to a bloody mess, with blood splattered everywhere, not a single drop had stained the boy's white school uniform.
"A... monster..."
In my final moment, I could not help but be seized by a chill.
This boy was not faintly colored.
He had no color at all.
A completely colorless, odorless, tasteless poison.
The moment I touched it, even slightly, my life had already ended.
What in the world was this monster wearing a human skin?
For me, facing death, there was no longer any way to know.