Every living thing has its own color.
And the more vivid that color is, the more dangerous it tends to be.
Mushrooms, toads, and snakes are prime examples. The more brilliant their hues, the more potent their poison.
That eye-catching brilliance is a warning.
A warning that the moment you try to eat it, you might die.
A creature with no sharp claws to tear skin and no powerful jaws to crush bone survives by teaching predators exactly how dangerous it is.
The same trait can be found in humans—specifically, Ghoul Investigators.
They always wear white coats.
Compared to creatures that actually carry venom, the color is plain, but that coat is a warning in its own right.
Other Ghouls sneer at them and call them Doves, but they are more than dangerous enough. Kill one, and they come swarming in a flock to exterminate the Ghoul responsible.
The coat that symbolizes a Ghoul Investigator carries a silent message: “Touch us, and you die.”
Kill an Investigator, and a movement to hunt that Ghoul will inevitably begin, inflicting heavy damage as if the predator had swallowed poisoned food.
I learned that through experience.
When I was cocky about my own strength, I ran wild, ignorant of the world. It was only after I was nearly killed by an extermination squad assembled specifically to take me down that I finally recognized the true danger of Ghoul Investigators.
After barely surviving that encounter, I stopped eating anything with a strong “color.”
And that didn't just apply to the Investigators.
When observing human society, you notice certain types of people.
Humans with bright, vivid colors radiate a powerful presence, even when placed among a hundred others.
Humans with dark, faint colors pass through the world as if they are barely there; if they suddenly vanish 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, I had spent my life hunting humans with faint colors.
And yet... how did it end up like this?
Squelch!!!
“Keh...!!!”
I tried to scream, but I couldn’t.
A grotesque blade had burrowed into my throat, blocking the airway and silencing me completely.
“Kh... aagh!!”
With a desperate swing of my arm, I barely knocked away the blade that was a fraction of a second from severing my throat.
The sword was flung aside.
An opening appeared.
Not wasting the chance, I swung my other arm at him.
Whoosh...!
But all that answered was the absurdly hollow sound of air being sliced.
Only then did I realize my outstretched arm was shorter than it should have been.
Thud!
Something fell a short distance away. A familiar shape.
I was stunned to see that what should have been attached to my shoulder had suddenly dropped onto the pavement.
Had the blade I thought I’d knocked away not been deflected at all, but had instead moved to sever 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!!
A razor-sharp edge flashed past.
My reaction shouldn't have been slow, and yet I 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 passed through.
The blood spraying in a straight line from both of my eyes proved it.
“Aaaaghhh!!!!”
Once my sight was stolen, the terror doubled.
With no time to think about pride, I rolled across the ground in a disgraceful heap.
Screaming, I shoved myself along the pavement with my remaining 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 was I feeling this much terror toward a piece of prey like him?
What the hell am I fighting?!
He had clearly been an ordinary student on his way home from school.
A quiet, taciturn, utterly unremarkable boy... a boy with “faint color.”
The moment that boy stepped into a deserted alley, I had begun the hunt.
And now, here I was.
Without even understanding what had happened to me, I was forced to crawl away like a pathetic worm.
Thump!
I hit something. A wall?
Where was I? Where could I run to survive?
Step. Step.
In a world drowned in darkness, only those light footsteps rang out, dry and rhythmic.
Not knowing where to go, I pressed my back against the wall and shrieked, “D-don’t come any closer!! I said stay away!!”
Step. Step. Step.
The sound did not stop.
Like a machine executing a preset program, he simply walked straight toward me.
“Kraaaagh!!”
With a beastly roar, I lunged toward the sound.
I had lost my sight, but a Ghoul’s senses far surpass those of a human. With my remaining four senses, I could still pinpoint his position.
He probably hadn’t expected this. This was my last chance.
He was still just a human. If I could land a single hit, I would win!
With that thought, I thrust out my fingers, sharp as a spear.
Puhk!!
I was pierced.
Not by some terrifying phantom, but by a cold blade that had pierced my heart with surgical precision.
“Ugh... ah...”
That piercing was only the beginning.
Immediately after, both shoulders, both legs, and finally my neck were torn apart in an instant—as if someone were disassembling a robot—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 the cut there had been shallow, but since my head had already been detached, it was meaningless.
Still, with that one remaining eye, I captured the image of the one who had killed me.
It was that boy.
An expressionless face, a mouth sealed in silence.
In one hand, he held the sword-shaped Quinque he had used to butcher me. With the other, he was calmly straightening his crooked glasses.
What was even more ridiculous was that while my body had been reduced to a bloody mess, with gore splattered everywhere, not a single drop of blood had stained the boy’s white school uniform.
A... monster...
In my final moment, I could not help but shudder.
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?
Facing death, I would never know the answer.
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