After a breakfast accompanied by Koma's "special sauce"—his own blood—Eto slung her backpack over her shoulder and stepped out of the house.
The walk to school felt different today. The path she took every morning felt heavy, as if she were wading through a mire. A group of elementary students her own age skipped past her, their faces bright with the effortless, carefree laughter of those who had nothing to fear. Eto stopped and stared at her reflection in a shop window.
She tried to smile.
...It didn't work. The expression felt jagged and alien on her face.
When she was with Koma, she felt a sense of security, but now that they were apart, the dread returned. The suffocating fear that she might be separated from her father once again began to crawl up her spine, visible in every line of her posture. It was no wonder Koma had seen right through her.
'Can I really just leave this all to Dad?'
It wasn't that she didn't trust him. But she couldn't erase the worry. Koma had a tendency to shoulder everything alone for her sake, pushing himself until he broke. Hadn't he nearly lost his mind doing exactly that in the past?
Was there no other way? A solution that could resolve this more simply, more permanently, and lighten Koma's burden?
As far as Eto knew, Hitokawa was the only one who held the secret of her identity. Koma believed that until their final confrontation tomorrow, Hitokawa wouldn't breathe a word to anyone else.
'If... just hypothetical, of course...'
She began to calculate.
What if Hitokawa met with a tragic accident? What if he were rendered incapable of speaking to anyone, unable to write, or even lost consciousness... a permanent coma? Or perhaps something even more definitive.
The most cruel, yet most honest form of silence—one that no one could defy.
What if a human named Tomoru Hitokawa simply ceased to exist?
"...!!"
Eto forced her thoughts to a screeching halt.
Dangerous. Her reason screamed at her that she must not follow that train of thought any further. Stricken by a sudden wave of vertigo at the darkness of her own imagination, she leaned her arm against the glass window for support.
She looked at her reflection once more.
—That face you're making right now... you look exactly like someone on the verge of committing murder.
"...."
...Now, for the first time, she felt she truly understood what Minami meant before she left. This was not a face she could ever show Koma. She must never let him see it.
Eto stumbled forward, her steps aimless. She wasn't in the mood for school. If she went, she might stand out for the wrong reasons, and the teachers might report her unstable condition to Koma.
She walked without a destination, seeking only a place devoid of human presence. She wanted to rest somewhere where her sharp ghoul senses wouldn't detect a single soul entering her territory.
Eventually, she found herself in an urban park. Since it was a weekday afternoon, the area was deserted. Eto sat on a secluded bench, pulling her knees to her chest and burying her face in them.
It was quiet.
The silence she shared with others felt stifling, but the silence she found alone brought a strange sense of peace. A gentle breeze, playing amidst the grass, drifted over to stroke her hair. Feeling the cool touch, Eto felt the tension in her heart begin to ebb.
As she regained her composure, the harsh reality of her situation came back into focus. She murmured in a faint, hollow voice.
"...Maybe I really shouldn't be with Dad after all."
"Why do you think that?"
"――――!?!?!!"
Her body reacted on reflex. Eto lunged away from the bench, skidding to a halt ten meters away, her eyes narrowed in a predatory glare.
A man she had never seen before was sitting on the very bench she had just occupied. He wore a black coat that reached his ankles despite the lack of cold, and a black fedora pulled low over his eyes, obscuring his features. He appeared to be middle-aged.
Eto's heart hammered against her ribs in pure shock. Her senses had been fanned out like a spiderweb, monitoring every inch of her surroundings for intruders. Yet, this man had approached without a sound, sat down, and spoken to her without her noticing a single thing.
She tried to catch his scent. There was nothing. He was 𝘰𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴.
The man raised a gloved hand to adjust his hat. Not even the rustle of fabric accompanied the movement. He was 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴.
As he tilted the brim, his eyes met Eto's. His presence was faint—so unremarkable that one might pass him on the street and mistake him for any ordinary neighborhood man. Despite his conspicuous black attire in the middle of the day, he seemed shrouded in shadow as if he were part of the night itself. He was 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴.
He was an uncanny existence, yet she couldn't determine if he was an enemy.
As Eto stood there, breaking into a cold sweat of confusion, the middle-aged man spoke in a calm, steady voice, pointing a finger toward her.
"Your 'eye.' It's showing."
"...! Ah!"
Eto reflexively touched her right eye. She couldn't see it, but she could feel it. The burning heat pooling in her socket was proof that her Kakugan had manifested.
"Do not let your emotions govern you so clumsily. Aside from hunger, emotion is the swiftest catalyst for revealing a ghoul's true nature."
She had already paid a bitter price for that mistake this morning. Eto tried to suppress the Kakugan, but it wouldn't fade as easily as she hoped.
"Vigilance toward a stranger. If your emotions are fluctuating because you cannot tell friend from foe, then change your perception. Instead of viewing them as an enemy, think of them as a 'liar' you are dealing with. It will allow you to maintain your guard while keeping your Kakugan in check."
"Oh...!"
She followed his advice, and the heat in her right eye began to dissipate. The Kakugan receded. Eto couldn't understand why this stranger was offering her such counsel. Once her eye returned to normal, she looked into his.
His eyes were sharp, bearing the weight of a long, arduous life, yet they were transparent. And within them, there was warmth.
It was the same warmth she saw in her father, Koma.
It was the same warmth she had felt from the woman who had once taught her the meaning of death.
It was a heat so profound that when the world turned cold and cruel, one would feel like leaning into it and weeping.
"Who... are you...?"
Koma had lost his mother and father. Even Ukin—the relative he had known—was gone now. Because Koma treated Eto like his true flesh and blood, his eyes were always warm.
And then there was the woman who had used her own life to teach Eto about death. Their time together had been fleeting, but in her final moments, she had looked at Eto as if she were her own child. That gaze, too, had been warm.
And now, another man with those same eyes was looking at her.
'Who are you, to look at me with eyes like that?'
Eto wanted to know, but the man pulled his fedora down again. By that simple act of averting his gaze, Eto knew that whatever he said next would not be the truth she sought.
"...Let us just say I am 'The Owl.'"
The Owl. A night hunter that glides through the sky in silence to snatch the life of its prey. It was a name that perfectly suited the man who had appeared beside her without a trace.
The man, seemingly wanting to move away from the topic of himself, spoke again.
"You look as though you are carrying a heavy burden... If you don't mind talking to an old man, I will listen."
"...."
Her suspicion hadn't entirely vanished, but Eto walked back to the bench and sat beside him. It wasn't a logical decision. It was something more primal... something etched into her very blood told her she could trust this man. And she desperately needed to vent the pressure building in her chest.
"...This is... something I read in a novel."
She couldn't reveal the whole truth, so she adapted it. She used the plot of a book she had once read as a metaphor.
"It's a story about a hatchling dragon. The protagonist finds the hatchling by chance and raises it. But... the world is caught in a fierce, eternal war between dragons and humans. They hate each other."
"I see..." The Owl let out a soft sound. It was a response that suggested he was either contemplating the story or had already read the hidden meaning behind her words.
"The protagonist has a long-time friend. They bicker sometimes, but they are true brothers-in-arms. But that friend hates dragons. He even belongs to an elite knightly order dedicated to slaying them. And one day, the friend discovers that the protagonist has been secretly raising a dragon."
"...."
"The friend wants to cast the dragon out, but the protagonist wants to protect it. A rift has formed between them because of the dragon. ...What should be done in a situation like this? How can the story end without anyone getting hurt? Is it really best to just abandon the hatchling...?"
"I do not believe so."
The Owl cut her off. His voice was neither scolding nor patronizing; it was the tone of someone offering a gentle embrace.
"An ending where no one is hurt is difficult to achieve. It may be possible in fiction, but reality is built upon a cruel structure. Even if the hatchling were abandoned, pain would be unavoidable. In that scenario, the protagonist would surely be left in sorrow."
"...."
"Let me ask you one thing. Why does the protagonist not hate the dragon?"
"...Because he knows that not all dragons are evil. ...He says a dragon saved his life when he was a child."
"But the protagonist's friend does not know that."
"...!"
It was a short sentence, but it made her ears perk up. The Owl continued.
"From the friend's perspective, it is only natural that he cannot trust dragons. As a knight dedicated to slaying them, every dragon he has ever encountered was likely one that 𝘩𝘢𝘥 to be killed. In his heart, the concept of an 'exception' simply does not exist yet."
"...."
𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘱.
Eto hopped down from the bench. The Owl watched her.
"Has your worry vanished?"
"It hasn't vanished... but thanks to you, I can see a thread to pull on. Thank you."
"Then I am glad. No matter where you go, do not forget to master your emotions. ...Eto."
"Yes! ...Wait, what?"
Did I tell him my name? She spun around to look at him.
The seat was empty. Just like his namesake, the Owl had vanished without a sound, exactly as he had arrived. In the end, she never learned who he was, but Eto bowed deeply toward the empty space in a gesture of gratitude.
Afterward, she slapped both her cheeks to psych herself up.
"To catch a tiger, you must enter the tiger's den!"
With a look of absolute resolve, Eto began to run. She was heading toward the CCG branch office—the place where Hitokawa worked.