Breathing.
Inhale. The heart. The pump. It carries oxygen.
To the muscles, to the brain, to the kakuhou.
Calories, oxygen, RC cells—everything is being consumed at a terrifying rate. No, it’s practically burning up.
Pain. Signals screaming from the muscles, the lungs, the heart, and the kakuhou. Warnings from a body pushed far beyond its limits.
Suppress it all with endorphins and adrenaline.
Pushing pain and fatigue to the back of her mind, she analyzed every piece of information flooding in through sight, hearing, and touch. Her brain issued the next command. Breathe. Move.
And evade.
KWAAANG!!!
A sharp, scale-like Kagune grazed past her, smashing through the wall.
The outside world was laid bare. A purple sky. Dawn, by the clock.
Attacks surged again from both sides. Scale-covered tendrils and knife-like feathers. Rinkaku and Ukaku.
Judging that charging straight in to dodge was impossible, she mapped out an escape route.
Behind her. She threw herself through the hole the Rinkaku had just ripped open.
The city below was still asleep. Before she plummeted, she jammed her fingers into a crack in the concrete, defying gravity to hurl her body upward.
She planted a foot on a glassless window frame and, blasting out her Ukaku, scaled the outer wall of the abandoned building.
The world remained dormant. The odds of anyone witnessing a Ghoul climbing a building wall like a lunatic were slim.
Relying on that, she ascended to the rooftop in one fluid motion.
She landed on the open roof and gasped for air.
She needed to replenish her oxygen, but she couldn't afford to relax her muscles yet.
If she let her guard down for even a second, her body would collapse.
“Haa... haa... haa... haa!”
Not enough oxygen. Dizzy. Nauseous. Thirsty. Hungry.
Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.
Meat. Meat. Meat. Meat. Meat. Meat. Meat. Meat.
I want to eat meat. How much time has passed? Meat with sweet juices running out of it. Did Uncle Hitokawa manage to save Dad? I want to chew and swallow until this hunger and thirst vanish. Is Dad safe? Meat. Hitokawa. Meat. Dad. Meat. I want to eat. Meat. Dad. I want to eat. Dad.
I want to eat Dad.
“No!!!”
No. That’s not right.
I don’t want to eat Dad. No, I do. Stop it. Don’t think about it. Because he’s so lovable. Why am I like this? Because he looks so delicious.
You wanted to eat him back then too, didn’t you?
Years ago, what you really craved wasn’t the Ghoul in the police uniform.
It was the father standing beside him.
CHOMP!!!
Eto bit violently into her own forearm.
She had to silence the grating ringing in her ears.
Between the severe exhaustion and the gnawing hunger, the boundaries of her reason were beginning to crumble.
Was this because she had eaten Ghoul flesh back then?
Or was this Eto’s true nature?
There was no way to know right now.
BOOM!!
The rooftop floor exploded.
The Insect-Masked Ghoul crawled up through the breach, followed closely by the Section Chief, who blasted out his Ukaku to scale the wall just as Eto had.
“That damn brat is a real pain in the ass.”
“Kehahahahaha!!!”
Ignoring the cackling deputy, the Section Chief glared at Eto.
Even with the enemy right in front of her, Eto made no move.
Her shoulders heaved with ragged breaths, and the Ukaku on her shoulders flickered like a dying flame.
At a glance, she looked completely spent, but he remembered how she had played this exact part before, only to launch a devastating counterattack the moment they let their guard down.
The voice behind the mask was unmistakably that of a child, but it possessed a cunning that demanded caution.
He didn't rush in; instead, he steadied his Ukaku feathers, preparing to deliver a lethal blow the moment she faltered.
“Heh...”
A laugh drifted through the air.
Not the grotesque cackle of the man beside him, but the bright, lively laugh of a child.
It was Eto. She was laughing.
Had she finally snapped? As the Section Chief stared at her in confusion, she abruptly lifted her head.
CHILL!!
Eto’s gaze, peering through the gaps of her mask, was enough to send a shiver of pure dread down the Section Chief’s spine.
“Meat...♪”
Eto murmured in a dreamy, airy voice.
A change in perspective. She didn't necessarily have to eat Koma or human flesh.
***
“Go the hell to sleep, you bastard!!”
Hitokawa kicked off the ground and charged.
He had conditioned his body specifically to fight Ghouls. Subduing an ordinary human—especially an injured woman—should have been effortless.
But that only applied if the opponent wasn't a complete lunatic.
“Ahahahaha!!!”
Minami swung her axe. Not at Hitokawa, but at a bottle resting on the iron bed beside him.
Seeing this, I screamed in a panic.
“Watch out! That’s sulfuric acid!!”
“...?!”
By the time he reacted, it was too late.
The bottle shattered, spraying sulfuric acid along the blade of the axe. A portion of the liquid flew directly toward Hitokawa.
Realizing he couldn't dodge, Hitokawa spun his body. He flared out his Ghoul Investigator’s coat to shield his face and hands, then instantly tore the acid-soaked garment off and flung it away.
Thanks to that split-second reaction, he avoided direct contact with the acid.
The coat on the floor and the axe blade in Minami’s hand began to hiss and bubble.
“Ahaha! What a shame~. If that had hit you properly, your face would’ve turned into something truly artistic!”
“You little—!!”
Enraged, Hitokawa prepared to charge again, but Minami’s next move froze him in his tracks.
She rested the edge of the axe blade on the lip of a nearby shelf.
It would have been harmless if it were a normal shelf, but this one was crowded with bottles of unidentified chemicals.
“This place used to be a pharmaceutical company, you know~. When it went bankrupt, they just left all the chemicals behind. We’ve found them quite useful for processing corpses~. There are a few particularly nasty, toxic ones mixed in there.”
Minami beamed at me and Hitokawa.
“I wonder what would happen if I smashed them all? Poisonous gas filling up this basement would be quite the disaster, wouldn't it? Or maybe you'd like to play Russian roulette and see which chemical you get drenched in? You might even survive, surprisingly~.”
“I have no intention of playing along with your pathetic games!”
“My, what a boring man~. I bet you're not popular with the ladies, are you?”
“Don’t hit me where it hurts!”
It was a stalemate.
We couldn't subdue Minami immediately, but leaving her unchecked was a liability.
She was threatening us with an axe and chemicals now, but the moment we looked away, she might grab something else to tighten the noose around our necks.
We had to settle this here and now.
Hitokawa seemed to agree, his grip tightening on his greatsword. He was prepared to take a fatal blow if it meant neutralizing her—regardless of who ended up wounded.
I reached out and stopped him just as he was about to lunge.
“Wait, leave this to me for a second.”
“What are you doing? You think you can actually reason with that woman?”
“We have to try. If force doesn’t work, we talk; if talking doesn’t work, we use force. That’s the rule, right? Remember that box-pushing game we played as kids?”
Hitokawa gave me a bewildered look, wondering why on earth I was bringing that up, but then his eyes shifted. Seeing the signal, I turned back to Minami.
Minami watched me with an expectant gaze, curious to see what would come out of my mouth.
“What? Are you going to try and persuade me? Give me some grand, sweeping speech like a novel protagonist and redeem the fallen heroine? How quaint. Go ahead, then. I’m dying to see if you can actually change me.”
“Persuade you? Hell no. I’m not doing that.”
She looked genuinely surprised, perhaps sensing the sincerity in my sigh.
“Oh? Really?”
“There are all kinds of values in this world, and I know that even the most hideous acts can hold a special meaning for the person doing them. The only things that can change that are either the arrogance of believing your own justice is absolute, or a genuine internal shift in the person. I’m not that special. I’m not arrogant enough to think my justice is the only truth, and I don’t have the power to be your catalyst for change. Oh, don’t misunderstand—that doesn’t mean I have any intention of forgiving your disgusting behavior.”
Eating human flesh for survival was one thing, but I would never condone killing people for the sake of 'art' or self-satisfaction.
Minami grumbled, clearly bored.
“How disappointing. So? What now? Begging for your life?”
“I’m going to insult you.”
“...What?”
The sheer absurdity of the statement brought the first flicker of genuine confusion to Minami’s face.
I didn't waste the opening. I took a deep breath and unleashed every ounce of frustration I had been bottling up.
“Listen here, you bitch!! Do you have any idea how much of a nightmare you've made my day!? From the chaos after Hitokawa found out about Eto, to everything leading up to this—the list is endless! What? You want to be a Ghoul? Turn me into a 'masterpiece'? Did you swallow your common sense through your ass and puke up a load of middle-school delusions!? If you want to spout that kind of crap, do it after a steel beam falls from the sky and crushes your skull!!”
Minami stood there in stunned silence, taking the barrage of abuse like a deer in headlights.
As for me, I felt a weight lift. When things go south, you have to scream it out. I felt an incredible sense of catharsis.
But I wasn't finished. I steadied my resolve and deployed the most taboo technique in the arsenal of insults.
“Is that twisted personality of yours something you inherited from your parents? I bet they’re thrilled to be rotting in hell together.”
A direct attack on the parents and a desecration of the dead. Even after everything she'd done, my conscience pricked me, but I had to do it.
Because her parents were the trigger.
“...!!”
For the first time, Minami’s expression went cold.
Her mouth parted as if to scream, her gaze locked onto me with absolute intensity. In that moment, her entire world narrowed down to me.
That was the moment I had been waiting for.
“Now!”
“Haaah!!”
SCREEEAAAK!!
On my signal, Hitokawa threw his entire weight into the iron bed.
The bed, which wasn't bolted to the floor, slid violently across the room, carrying Hitokawa with it as he slammed into Minami.
“?!”
By the time Minami reacted, it was too late.
The iron bed crushed her against the wall.
The impact knocked the axe from her grip, and she gasped for air, pinned between the metal frame and the concrete.
“Cough!!”
Minami was subdued. But the danger wasn't over.
The collision had jostled the shelf, sending two bottles of unknown liquid tumbling toward the edge. I didn't know what was in them, but if they shattered, they would drench both Hitokawa and Minami.
“Taah!!”
I lunged forward to snatch the bottles before they hit the floor. The plan had worked perfectly; I wasn't about to let a clumsy accident ruin the finish.
The “box-pushing game” I’d mentioned to Hitokawa had been a craze at our elementary school.
We had used desks instead of boxes, but the name stuck. Two people formed a team, and the goal was to push the opposing team all the way to the wall.
Hitokawa had remembered it and moved exactly as I’d hoped.
Even back then, our strategy was always the same: I would distract the opponent with a barrage of words while Hitokawa delivered the surprise push.
It was a tactic only possible between lifelong friends. And the result was...
“...Did it work?”
“...It worked.”
Only after I held up the bottles I had barely managed to catch could we finally breathe a sigh of relief.
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