A fountain of gore erupted into the air.
The excruciating agony of a severed limb and the sudden, hollow sense of loss surged through his veins and optic nerves, slamming into his brain. His mind, reeling from the unexpected blow, began pumping out a volatile mixture of adrenaline and primal fury.
The Senior Manager's eyes were instantly dyed a sickening, dark crimson.
The pain in his stump made him want to lunge forward and tear the intruder's throat out then and there, but a dataset titled 'Experience' stored in the corner of his mind forced his reason to hold. Lunging blindly just because one took a hit was the thought process of a bottom-feeder, a creature with a lifespan no longer than a mayfly's.
"Senior Manager! Your arm...! You little bastard!!"
For example, like this Team Leader.
Seeing his superior wounded, the Team Leader moved to charge forward, but the Senior Manager held up his remaining hand to stop him.
"I'm fine. Watch your back."
"Huh?"
"𝘈𝘩, 𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘯. 𝘏𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘥."
𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘯𝘨――!!!
A metallic collision rang out, echoing violently against the walls of the alley. It was the sound of Hitokawa's Quinque—having leaped from a nearby window to attempt a pincer attack with Eto—clashing against the Kagune the Team Leader had deployed at the very last second.
Despite the pre-dawn darkness, the Team Leader recognized the white suit instantly. His eyes bulged.
"A Ghoul Investigator?!"
"𝘛𝘤𝘩."
Seeing his overhead strike, intended to split the ghoul's skull, blocked by a wall of flesh, Hitokawa kicked off the Kagune and flipped backward. He landed gracefully, naturally sealing off the entrance to the alley.
They were surrounded. Eto in front, Hitokawa behind. Both of them ignored each other's presence entirely, focusing their killing intent solely on the monsters before them. The Team Leader, realizing the impossible nature of the alliance, spat out a curse.
"What kind of sick joke is this?! Why the hell is a Ghoul Investigator working with a ghoul?!"
"Don't talk to me, pal. My own sense of identity is already in a blender; I'm on the verge of losing it as it is."
𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘱!!
Hitokawa lunged in a low stance, his greatsword slung behind him, before twisting his body to swing the Quinque with everything he had. The Team Leader blocked and counterattacked, but Hitokawa deftly danced out of range before swinging again.
𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨! 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘢𝘯𝘨!!
The rhythmic, violent sound of steel meeting predatory flesh continued unabated.
Directly behind him, his subordinate was locked in a life-or-death struggle with an investigator, but the Senior Manager didn't offer so much as a glance. Though he currently indulged in the 'hobby' of playing with human corpses, he was a ghoul who had survived a long, brutal history of conflict. He had survived ghoul turf wars and CCG raids alike; his instincts for survival were honed to a razor edge. He was confident that no one could catch him off guard.
Indeed, he had sensed Hitokawa's ambush in advance.
Yet, strangely, he hadn't realized Eto was attacking until the very moment her strike landed. It had been a perfect ambush—soundless, windless, and devoid even of bloodlust, like an owl snatching the neck of an unsuspecting animal. She had targeted his arm to save the girl whose head was about to be crushed, but the question haunted him: if she had aimed for his throat from the start, would he have survived?
"...What the hell are you?"
Looking at her, she was a small, almost stunted figure. Her voice was unmistakably that of a child. If the face behind that Owl mask truly belonged to a mere brat, then what was the meaning of that terrifying technique?
His years of experience were screaming a warning: the real threat wasn't the investigator at his back, but the enigma standing before him.
"...."
Eto didn't answer. Instead, she knelt beside the girl she had just rescued from the Team Leader's grasp. The child was blinking, the reality of her survival not yet fully processed. But she clearly understood she had nearly died; her small hands were trembling violently.
A hand reached out from beneath Eto's blanket and gently covered the girl's own.
"It's going to be okay."
The voice was that of a girl her own age. Perhaps it was that, or the warmth radiating from the hand, but the girl's tremors began to subside.
"Would you close your eyes for me?"
It was a light, soft request, like one friend asking another for a favor. The girl gave a small nod and squeezed her eyes shut. Eto stood up and looked back at the Senior Manager.
"Just to be sure, I'll ask. Do you know a human woman who seems a bit 'broken,' and a ghoul in an insect mask?"
The Senior Manager's brow twitched. The description was an exact match.
"Ho.... So you know our colleagues?"
"I have no interest in them. I only care about the man they brought with them."
"𝘏𝘮𝘮𝘮?"
The Senior Manager narrowed his eyes, sensing a strange heat in Eto's voice. The man Minami had brought in—Takaki Koma—and the situation he now found himself in... the interval between those two facts was closing rapidly.
"I see. So that's it. I thought Minami had brought in a decent piece of material, but it turns out he's nothing but a headache. Curse her."
"Where is he?"
"I wonder. I'm not the one in charge of turning him into a 'work' this time. For all I know, he's being dismantled piece by piece at this very moment."
"...."
Eto fell silent.
The Senior Manager shifted his stance, preparing to deploy his Kagune. He hoped his provocation would send Eto into a blind, reckless rage, allowing him to deliver a fatal counter-strike.
And he was right—Eto's temperature was rising. Her right eye and her shoulder felt as though they were being seared by white-hot coals. And yet....
"...?"
The Senior Manager squinted, confused. The heat that had seemed ready to explode out of Eto just moments ago suddenly vanished. It was as if rising magma had been instantly snuffed out by a massive glacier.
It was only natural. Because what was about to happen was an essential 'first' for Eto.
'Dad...'
Eto closed her eyes and thought of Koma.
He would never forgive what she was about to do. It would break his heart. She knew this. Eto was about to commit an evil act, and she was fully aware of it.
—What makes it evil?
Another emotion whispered in the back of her mind. She had known for a long time that this was the voice of the 'ghoul' within her.
—The evil ones are the people who touched us when we were doing nothing but trying to live. The world that stole Dad away is the evil. What's wrong with taking back what was stolen?
But Eto rejected the whisper.
Those who do bad things must be punished. It was a simple truth, yet one that most chose to ignore. But she would accept the consequences. Because that was the path she chose—not for the world, but for herself.
'I will take the punishment.'
She would save her father, and then she would accept his judgment.
'That is the difference between the "ghoul" me and the "human" me.'
The whispers died away. It would be fine. Even if her hands were stained with blood, and even if it led her down a dark path... she knew her father would be there to scold her.
And that was enough to give her peace. Peace enough... to kill them all.
𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘳𝘳𝘳𝘳𝘳𝘳!!
"!?!?!"
Without warning or preamble, Eto's Ukaku erupted in a blaze of light. Simultaneously, she hurled the object she had been holding in her hand. It was the Senior Manager's severed arm.
"Is that all?!"
The Senior Manager batted the limb away with contempt. He was a veteran; he wasn't about to be distracted by such a clumsy feint.
After throwing the arm, Eto used her erupting Ukaku as a jet booster and lunged. Her speed was terrifying—a velocity that would be impossible to track without a ghoul's reflexes. But the Senior Manager reacted, deploying his Kagune.
His was a Kokaku—a type with a natural elemental advantage over an Ukaku like Eto's. An Ukaku had speed, but it lacked the power to pierce the iron-clad defense of a Kokaku. He planned to block her strike and then run her through the heart.
𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘱!!
But just before impact, Eto's silhouette veered diagonally, flying toward the alley wall. She kicked off the masonry, ricocheting like a billiard ball.
'Going for the blind spot? Futile!'
The Senior Manager folded his Kokaku tentacles into a shield around his back. His defense against a flanking maneuver was absolute.
But Eto ignored him entirely. She sailed over the Senior Manager's head, kicked off the opposite wall, and shot forward like an arrow.
She was heading in the opposite direction—toward someone else.
In that instant, the Senior Manager realized he had made a grave mistake.
𝘚𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘭𝘤𝘩――!!!
The sound of flesh being torn, of a hand forcing its way between muscle and bone.
The sound seemed to freeze time itself. The Senior Manager, who had been focused on protecting himself, and Hitokawa, who had been in the middle of a swing, both stood frozen, their mouths agape.
"𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩...!! W-What the hell...!!!"
The Team Leader spat out a mouthful of blood and looked down at his chest with disbelief. A small hand was protruding from the center of his torso.
It was Eto's hand.
It had pierced straight through his back, through his heart, and out of his chest. The Team Leader, fully occupied with Hitokawa, had never seen the strike coming. He hadn't even considered that he might be the target.
𝘚𝘭𝘪𝘱!!
With a sickening squelch, Eto withdrew her hand. The Team Leader stumbled, trying to resist the inevitable, but his knees buckled, and he collapsed into the pool of his own blood. The life vanished from his body in an instant.
"Is this my... 'first murder'?"
Eto stared at the blood on her hand.
The unsettling, heavy crimson light.
the temperature of thirty-six degrees Celsius.
The scent of iron that tickled her nose.
The metallic, briny taste.
As all these things drained away, a living body met its end.
A single quote from a novel Eto had read surfaced in her mind—her only comment on the experience.
"'The life a person leads is so heavy, yet its end is so very light.'..."