“……………….”
……First, I need to calm down. Just count the primes slowly.
*2, 3, 5, 7, 11…….*
With every number she counted, Eto’s steps carried her forward. By the time she reached 19 in her head, she had arrived.
At Eto’s feet lay a dark red bloodstain. It looked old; the surface had dried and begun to flake away.
*34…… 37…….*
She knelt and reached out to the stain.
When she pressed down with her finger, the damp blood trapped beneath the crusted surface seeped out.
A seductive scent of blood rose, prickling the tip of her nose.
*57……. 59…….*
She stared quietly at the blood on her trembling finger.
In her mind, she clung desperately to the numbers. If she didn’t, she felt as though she would lose her sanity.
Then, slowly, very slowly, she brought her finger to her lips.
*71……. 73……. 79…….*
Her saliva shimmered with a strange hue. Wrapped in that moisture, her shy tongue carefully welcomed the finger.
The blood was branded onto her tongue like a searing mark.
*89……. 97…9……77…054762119420820782……!!!!!!*
She had never taken drugs in her life. But was this what it felt like?
A dizzying sensation, vertigo, and pure pleasure, as if her brain were melting. It felt as though thorns were spreading from the base of her tongue, seizing control of every nerve in her body.
Even the prime numbers she had been counting to maintain her composure had devolved into an incomprehensible string of random digits.
She could feel her right eye burning.
With her head bowed low, her face hidden behind a veil of hair, the only thing visible was the dark red [Kakugan], glowing vividly in the gloom.
He wasn't there.
Nowhere was there any sign of her father.
Nowhere was there any trace of his presence.
Only a frightened kitten, having witnessed something terrible, peeked at Eto and cried pitifully.
The front door stood wide open. Clear traces of her father’s blood remained on the floor, and the trail continued past the doorway before abruptly cutting off.
It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened.
“Whose doing is thisssssssssssssssssssss――――――――――!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Eto’s emotions, no longer able to be contained, erupted into a violent fury.
Ripping through her clothes, wing-shaped [Kagune] burst from her right shoulder. It stretched out like a streak of light, and Eto’s figure vanished from the house in an instant.
***
“Damn it! Why can’t I get through to the standby teams?!!”
As Hitokawa sprinted down the street, he was seized by the urge to hurl his phone away.
There was no contact at all with the three teams assigned to monitor the area around Koma’s house. Not one team, but all three. If none of them could be reached, something had definitely gone wrong.
Racing along the fastest route toward Koma’s house, Hitokawa glanced at the two sheets of paper in his hand.
One was a photo from police CCTV regarding the theft of a [Q Bullet].
A female culprit with her face masked had somehow infiltrated the police armory.
The safe storing the [Q Bullet] had been broken open, and the woman had been caught on camera holding the stolen pistol in one hand while flashing a V-sign at the CCTV like some kind of lunatic.
The other sheet was a composite sketch created from witness statements about a cleaner who had disguised herself to gain entry.
Individually, the features looked different, but taken as a whole—and especially considering that bizarre behavior toward the camera—it was unmistakably someone Hitokawa knew.
*Shinaoto Minami! I knew something felt off from the moment we first met!!*
The pistol Minami had stolen, along with the [Q Bullet], had been delivered to Koma under the name of Koma’s father.
That alone didn’t reveal her ultimate goal, but it was enough to prove that her approach to Koma had not been a coincidence.
Gasping for air, he finally saw Koma’s house come into view.
Racing through the quiet residential district—deserted since it was daytime and most people were at work—Hitokawa looked up at the roof of the house as he drew closer.
Just then, a small shadow leaped from the roof.
“……Huh?”
At first, he thought it was a bird.
But what bird could fly with only one wing? What bird could streak through the air with such an ominous dark red glow?
……And more importantly, what bird would charge at a human at nearly supersonic speed???
“What the hell is this?!!”
Hitokawa yanked open his metal case in a panic.
As the [Quinque] sprang out and assembled itself, the shadow of the flying object expanded rapidly before his eyes and crashed down upon him.
KWA-GA-GA-GA-CRACK―――!!!!!!
He barely managed to block the blow with his wing-shaped greatsword, Iwawashi, but the impact was so great that Hitokawa’s legs were swept off the ground.
BOOOOM!!
“Ghk!”
Flung back into a nearby wall, Hitokawa groaned as a sharp pain shot through his back.
His breathing was labored, but he couldn't dare loosen his grip.
If he let up for even a second, he would be crushed flat by the monstrous strength of the brat pinning him down with the greatsword.
Hitokawa grimaced and looked at the Ghoul who had attacked him without warning: Eto.
The composed little girl who had visited him less than an hour ago, telling him she wouldn’t kill him but was prepared to fight, was gone.
In her place was a Ghoul baring her fangs and growling like a wild beast.
He didn’t know why only one of her [Kakugan] had surfaced.
But both her Ghoul eye and her human eye were bloodshot with raw rage.
The [Ukaku] blazing behind Eto’s back like a hellfire seemed to be a direct manifestation of her current mental state.
“You little brat, did you finally show your true colors, or did you just suddenly lose your mind? Which is it?”
“Shut up, shut up, shut uuuup!!! Where did you take Dad!! Where did you take my Dad, you bastarddddddddddd――――――――――??!?!!!”
Clang……!!
The arm bracing the greatsword like a shield began to buckle under the pressure of the [Ukaku], which was blasting out like a jet booster.
At this rate, he really was going to be crushed.
*What is this power!? There’s no way a ten-year-old Ghoul can put out this kind of output!*
In terms of raw power, she was beyond B-rate, bordering on A-rate.
As Hitokawa struggled through a cold sweat, he suddenly noticed something strange in Eto’s words.
“W-wait! What do you mean, where did I take Koma!? Why are you asking me that! What happened to him!?”
“Don’t play dumb!! Dad disappeared!! There was blood left on the floor!! And the presence of the investigators who were with him vanished too!! Anyone can see he was forcibly taken away to separate him from me!!!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!!! I haven’t told anyone your identity yet!! I never asked the investigators to do anything like that!! If something happened to Koma, then the culprit is someone else!!”
“……!!”
The pressure of her unrestrained rage subsided. If he wanted, he could have swung the greatsword to knock Eto away, but he held back.
If he did that now, she would mistake it for an attack, and any chance of conversation would vanish.
“Then who is it? Who took Dad!?”
“Shinaoto Minami.”
“!”
For a moment, the image of Minami as she had last appeared flashed through Eto’s mind.
That woman who had left Eto with a sneering remark before disappearing, leaving behind a foul, lingering impression.
“And the one who sent the pistol and [Q Bullet] to Koma was that woman too. I’ve got proof. That woman approached Koma from the very beginning with some scheme in mind!”
“…….”
Tap!
Eto leaped off Hitokawa’s greatsword.
Landing lightly on the ground, Eto asked with eyes that had regained a sliver of calm, “……Where is that woman?”
“We’re going to find her. Starting now.”
“And why should I trust you?”
Hitokawa’s eyebrow twitched. This brat was getting awfully insolent.
“What are you going to do if you don’t? Go storming around in that state and search the city blindly?”
“If it’s necessary, I will.”
Her tone had returned to normal, but her emotions were still volatile; both her [Kakugan] and [Kagune] continued to blaze as she spoke.
Hitokawa was dumbfounded.
“Why don’t you just make yourself the target of every investigator in this city? I’ll bet my arm that your life runs out before you find Koma.”
“…….”
“I know how ridiculous it sounds to trust the words of someone who doesn’t trust you. But you’re in the same position—you don’t have a better plan either.”
Click, click.
Hitokawa folded the greatsword and slid it back into the metal case.
Putting away his weapon in front of a Ghoul—no matter how shaken she was, Eto understood the gesture.
“This is an emergency. While we look for Koma, I’ll be here not as a Ghoul Investigator, but as your father’s friend. So for now, follow my lead.”
“…….”
Eto glared at Hitokawa for a long moment, then finally nodded and retracted her [Kagune].
***
“…….”
My stomach feels sick. The back of my head is throbbing.
I tried to move my hand to rub the back of my head.
Clink.
But before my hand could reach, an irritating metallic sound halted my arm. Frowning, I turned my head.
Shackles were clamped around my wrist.
Old, rusted shackles linked to a chain and bolted to the wall.
“Oh? You’re awake already? You could have slept a little longer.”
“……Shinaoto.”
“I told you to call me Minami~.”
In a dark, damp room without a single window, Minami—the culprit who had put me in this state—was reading a book by candlelight.
The flickering light caught her eyes as she looked at me.
Black sclera, red irises. The unmistakable eyes of a Ghoul.
I spoke calmly to her, while she wore an expectant expression that seemed to ask, *Surprised? Surprised?*
“What kind of pathetic Ghoul cosplay is this?”
“…………Huh? How did you know?”
Minami blinked, genuinely surprised that I had seen through her so easily.
“I can tell just by the look in your eyes. My body reacts instinctively to that kind of gaze—the look of someone seeing me as food.”
I said this while consciously touching the fang-shaped scar on my right arm.
Then, I jerked my chin toward the steel pipe leaning in the corner of the room. The very pipe she had used to bash my head in.
“And Ghouls don’t use steel pipes. It’s far easier and more convenient for them to smash a human skull with their bare hands.”
“Hmm~ I see. You’re quite well-informed, aren’t you?”
Minami touched her eye, sounding disappointed that she hadn’t fooled me.
She plucked out the colored contact lens she had used to mimic the eye color.
“What exactly are you? I take it the company employee thing was a lie.”
“Mm? No, that part isn’t a lie~. It’s true that I’m the lowest-ranking regular employee. It’s just that it’s not a *normal* company.”
Plop. Plop.
As she smiled brightly, a wet liquid dripped onto my head.
I looked up, and immediately regretted doing so.
“Kehahahahaha!!!”
A Ghoul was clinging to the junction of the ceiling and wall like a spider, suspended by long, spindly limbs.
His face was hidden behind an insect-shaped mask.
Was this the one? The Ghoul who had attacked me and Hitokawa last time. This was the first time I was seeing him while fully conscious.
He let out a grotesque laugh, drooling something foul toward me. Even with my mental fortitude, the sight was unsettling.
“That’s our company’s deputy manager~. We happened to run into each other on the way back to the office. I think he was in the middle of a meal. Since we met by chance, he agreed to help with your kidnapping~.”
“……Deputy manager?”
“Yep. Deputy manager. Don’t worry; despite his looks and behavior, he’s the kindest person in our company. We also have section chiefs, team leaders, and assistant managers. I think it’s been a while since anyone’s seen the president’s face, though.”
I was momentarily confused.
What the hell was this "company" she was talking about……
“A company run by Ghouls?”
“Yep, correct~! And I’m the only woman in the office, as well as the lowest-ranking employee. I’m Shinaoto Minami, a ‘human who wants to become a Ghoul’~! Yay~ applause~!”
“Kehahaha!”
Clap, clap.
As Minami clapped, the bastard on the ceiling—the deputy manager—clapped along. What in the world were these people……
The feeling of my mind going blank wasn't just because of the wound on the back of my head.
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