by Shin Towada
The boys started yelling in panic. One of them, seeing Kaneki thrashing on the ground, said, “Guys, this is bad.” As if that was their signal, they started yelling, “Never seen him before!” “Leave me alone!” Then they ran away.
“Well, that went better than I thought.”
Kaneki stood up, swallowing the blood he hadn’t already spit out. All the blood looked impressive, but thanks to the training he’d received from Touka and Yomo, he wasn’t in too much pain.
“So doing it your way worked out …”
When things had calmed down, Touka came back, amazed.
“Mr. Kaneki, I’m sorry …” Hinami’s eyes were full of tears, however.
“I’m fine,” Kaneki said, smiling.
“The kid told us what happened,” Touka said, looking at the boy. He was trembling unnaturally. “We wouldn’t have found her if it wasn’t for you.”
“But I didn’t do anything!” the boy said, hesitating. “I … I …”
Kaneki tilted his head. Hinami looked at the boy, tears still in her eyes. He looked back at them, before yelling, as if he’d made up his mind, “My dad told me to stand up to bad people, and I wanted to help, but I was so scared I couldn’t do anything! I … I … just ran away!”
“No, you didn’t,” Kaneki interrupted. “You helped Hinami in the best way possible. Didn’t he?” he said, turning to look at Touka. Her face said Don’t bring me into this, but then she smiled.
“We found her thanks to you,” she said. Kaneki smiled.
“So, thank you.”
Kaneki’s words cut through the boy’s worries, and tears started to overflow from his eyes. He tried to hold the tears back, perhaps out of embarrassment over crying, but he couldn’t stop them. Kaneki smiled again at the sight of him trying not to sob.
Hinami started to cry again, brought on by the boy’s tears.
All’s well that ends well, Kaneki thought to himself, glad from the bottom of his heart.
Just then, Hinami clutched her hands to her stomach and fell to the ground.
“Hinami?”
Touka looked at her hurriedly, but Hinami looked like she had no idea what was happening to her.
“Are you okay?” the boy asked gently, looking down at her and wiping his tears away with his sleeve. Hinami got up, still clutching her stomach. She shook her head slightly and ran away.
“Hinami!”
“Hinami, wait!”
What just happened? Touka chased after her immediately. Kaneki was left speechless for a moment before saying thank you to the boy and running after the two of them.
Hinami ran for a while before stopping suddenly. Both her hands still clutched her stomach.
“Hinami?”
For some reason Touka stopped Kaneki when he tried to call out to the girl out of concern. Then, she stood next to her and called her Hina, her nickname. Hinami did not turn around.
“My stomach … started,” she said, her voice trembling.
They went cold at once, as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water over them. Basically, what had happened was, to put it simply … what?
“I don’t know why, but my stomach is … why? Why am I … ?”
Hinami was in a state of confusion, not understanding what was happening in her own body.
“It’s okay, Hinami. It’s okay now,” Touka said, gathering the girl in her arms. Hinami said nothing else. Neither did the two of them.
There was a large borderline between humans and Ghouls. And the more one knew the starker it stood between them and humans, like a complete mockery.
After that, Hinami didn’t want to go to the library anymore. She hid away the bookmark the boy had given her.
This world is wrong.
That’s what the young Ghoul investigator Kankei had faced off against had said.
Kaneki thought about those words. Does he envision a world that has nothing wrong with it?
But I still …
I can’t imagine that kind of world.
IV
Kaneki was lost in thought, Touka was worried about Hinami, and Hinami was downbeat. They could all see right through each other.
“It’s just like they say, when you’re exhausted little problems add up,” Yoshimura said with a sigh. He had just gotten word from Yomo.
They never would have left Hinami alone back when he’d warned them about suspicious people hanging around the area. The suspicious characters hadn’t been spotted for a while, so they’d let their guard down.
But strange people in the neighborhood or not, this was unacceptable. If they got complacent and let their attention drift even once, it would all have been for nothing.
The suspicious characters Yoshimura had warned them of had never existed. They had appeared when Yoshimura wanted them to, and Yomo had fleshed them out a little—these shadows, so to speak, that walked on their own.
It was because he worried about them that these shadows appeared, sometimes to protect them and sometimes to hold them back.
“Is it kind, or is it cruel? Sometimes I don’t know anymore,” Yomo whispered. “Just talking to myself,” he added.
Yoshimura gave a graceful smile and said, “If everything was easily understood, this wouldn’t really be living.” Then, like Yomo, he added, “Just talking to myself.”
“There’s still things I want to see, you know.”
V
“I’m back.”
“Hey, honey. You’re home early.”
Mother walked over to father, just home from work. Father handed her his suit jacket and headed down the hall.
“They’ve still got me jumping all over the place for a while.”
“But you were just going to get a post in the 20th Ward! Well, what a shame.”
“That’s not all. Toujou’s really happy about it. He says if I were posted in the 20th Ward I’d go straight home and never go out drinking with him.”
“Oh my,” she chuckled.
When he walked into the living room, their son was there reading a book.
“Hey, Yuuki, what are you reading today?” he asked his son, who loved reading. He held up the cover.
“The New Book of Ghoul Dissection?”
“Oh, that’s nice, honey. Taking an interest in your dad’s work?”
“Come on, give me a break. It’s a dangerous job fighting these inhuman beasts who prey on people. Just the other day there was a Ghoul spotted in the 20th Ward and we had to—” He began to explain, with a somber look.
“Yes, dear,” the mother said, stretching.
“Just joking. Hey, is it dinnertime?”
The two of them went into the kitchen.
Yuuki sighed with relief and stuck a bookmark in his book. It was a silver bookmark with a four-leaf clover engraved at one end.
But those red eyes came back to his mind—the red eyes of the girl’s “big sister” when they’d found her. They were like the kakugan that dad was always telling him about, the mark of a Ghoul.
Now that he thought about it, there was a lot about those three that matched up with what his dad had told him about Ghouls.
“Inhuman beasts.” That was what his dad always called them.
“Are they really all bad guys, all of them?” he wondered.
The girl had a kindly sister, a brother who kept really cool in a crisis, and the girl herself was so timid but cute when she smiled.
“Or are some of them … actually good?”
Yuuki slammed his book shut.
Forget about it.
There’s nothing I can do about it now anyway. No matter how bad it looks, until I find the best way, it’s …
“Yuuki, I was just wondering, whatever happened to the girl you met at the library?” his dad asked, coming back into the living room.
&n
bsp; “Huh?” Yuuki said. “Oh, um … I think she moved away.”
Even Kazuo is alive.
This is the story of Kazuo Yoshida’s lifetime of struggle, until the final curtain fell on his life at the age of forty-one, struck down by Nishiki as collateral damage when Kaneki, freshly minted as a Ghoul and lured there by the scent of death, stumbled into his feeding spot, panicked, and screamed.
“Okay, everyone, I want those thighs up! And down. And up again, high as you can! Right, here we go—one, two—one, two!”
In the 20th Ward, not far from the main shopping street, was the fitness club where Kazuo worked. It was a busy place full of people coming and going. Kazuo was a member of the staff there, primarily making his living by teaching aerobics.
If one had to say one thing about his face, it would be, “too bad.” But if nothing else, his build was fantastic from working there. His limbs were long, his torso was ripped, and even his butt was tight. His coworkers frequently praised him, saying, “If it wasn’t for that face!”
“Kazuo, you really do have a fantastic body, you know. I wish mine was like that,” said Manami, a woman who had recently joined the gym. She spoke to him during the break in aerobics with a dreamy look on her face. She apparently worked as a receptionist at a big company, and she was charming and cute. Plus, every time she came to the gym, she complimented Kazuo.
“I think that girl’s into you, Kazuo …” said Saotome, one of his friends at work, once all the customers had gone home and just the staff was left.
“I—I really don’t think so,” Kazuo said, and laughed nervously.
“But she doesn’t even look at me or anyone else. Looks like the flowers are finally in bloom for you too, Kazuo.”
Saotome was mainly in charge of the gym, and he was a popular, attractive guy with a muscular body and something a little bit wild about him. He was much younger than Kazuo, but he had been at the fitness club for longer, so Saotome spoke to him without mincing words. Kazuo was used to it.
“It’s just that I’m easy to talk to. She probably only talks to an old guy like me out of pity,” Kazuo said in an unassuming way.
“You’re probably right!” Saotome agreed straightaway. I wish he’d tried to deny it.
But the idea that anything could happen with me and such a young, cute girl … Kazuo didn’t feel bad about it.
One day, he left the fitness club after work and was heading home when, out of nowhere, he heard someone yelling. The yells seemed to be coming from the parking lot at the club. Maybe there’s a fight happening.
It would be horrible if there were a problem on the club grounds. Kazuo ran toward the voices.
When he got there, he saw Manami, the girl who always spoke to him. And right by her was a dodgy-looking guy with crimped hair and a goatee. The man had been yelling at Manami.
Kazuo’s face might’ve been a shame, but he was a Ghoul. He was seldom outdone by a human.
“Knock it off!”
Kazuo jumped out.
“Oh? Who the hell are you?”
But the man threatened him and Kazuo backed away.
“P-please stop. It’s dark now and you’ll disturb the neighbors …”
Kazuo had lost his initial momentum and become flustered. The man clicked his tongue.
“Get me that half a million now!” he yelled, then left.
Half a million yen?
“I’m sorry, Kazuo …”
“Don’t be. What was that … ?” Kazuo didn’t know if he should ask her about what he’d heard.
“The truth is, my mother is sick, and in order to come up with the money for all the hospital bills, I had to go to a loan shark,” said Manami, without him even asking. “But I’ve got everything under control now! I’m sorry for causing you trouble.” She paused. “I’m so glad you came to help me.”
“Oh?” he said, sounding nervous and hollow. Manami turned away and left before he realized it. Kazuo thought about the faint blush of her cheeks just then, and squatted back down to the ground for a while.
Some people do terrible things. Imagine the kind of guy who’d try to wring money out of an innocent woman like that.
Once he got home, Kazuo lamented to himself about the absurdities of the world as he did sit-ups.
A guy like that will come back to threaten her again. It might be at home or at work, or even somewhere she likes to hang out, like today. It doesn’t matter. To dare causing a scene like that by making somebody scream in public, you’ve gotta have something wrong with you mentally. Is Manami always in that kind of trouble? Kazuo couldn’t let himself think like that. He directed all his anger toward loan sharks.
“Anyone who does that really oughta be killed! I’m gonna kill ’em!”
I mean, I’m a Ghoul, if it comes down to it I could just eat them. Kazuo’s eyes turned red, and he started doing his sit-ups even faster. That day, he was so angry he kept doing sit-ups for hours.
II
“Excuse me, Kazuo? I just wanted to say thank you, for before.”
A few days later, when the aerobics class had ended and everyone was leaving, Manami got changed quickly and came over to Kazuo to talk.
I did a thousand sit-ups with you on my mind, he thought, but knew it wasn’t something he could say to her, so he refrained and said, “Don’t worry about it. I hope you’re all right.”
“I brought a little something for you, to say thanks,” she said, and pulled a large lunch box out of her bag. The stench of human food drifted out.
“Is it a …”
“It’s a lunch box. You work out all day, so I thought you must be hungry. I made lots!”
Sometimes concern takes the form of a one-two punch.
But Kazuo said, “Thank you.” This was evidence of her gratitude. Can I just pretend to eat it? No, no I can’t.
“Take care, have a good day, Kazuo!”
When he got home, Kazuo steeled himself and ate the food. Awful, awful, awful, all of it awful. But I ate it. I ate the whole
thing.
Then he slept for two days.
A week after that, Kazuo was still in poor physical condition from the shock to the stomach Manami’s food had given him. Work was finally over and he was leaving the fitness club when he heard someone shouting in the parking lot.
“Not again!”
He rushed over to find Manami being threatened again by the same man from the other day.
“I said, leave her alone!”
“Not you again …”
The man clucked. “Half a million, I told you, half a million!” he spat at Manami, then left.
Then, Kazuo ran over to her.
“Manami, are you okay?”
“Oh, Kazuo!”
Manami collapsed in his arms, clinging to him. Kazuo stood up straight in surprise.
“Oh no, I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away as she apologized. “What is there to like about a woman like me … A useless woman like me, hounded by collectors with my mother in the hospital—I’m no good for someone like you!”
She ran away in a flood of tears. Kazuo could only stand there, flabbergasted, and watch her leave.
“I’m really gonna kill ’em, gonna kill ’em for real, this is not a metaphor, this is for real!”
For days, Kazuo was shaking with anger when he thought of Manami. In order to calm himself, he went to Anteiku for coffee.
But one day even having a coffee at Anteiku didn’t do it for him. His anger toward the loan shark was still burning within him, his hair was falling out, and his forehead felt like it had gone dry.
The relatively mild-mannered Kazuo was spitting out his violent mantra, like a drunken human.
Suddenly, Touka Kirishima, the evening shift waitress, emerged from behind the counter and came over to him. She stood beside Kazuo a
nd gave him a grin.
“There are humans and other customers here, I will kill you for real.”
Her voice was chilling, a voice that was unimaginable from looking at her smile.
Her kind of ‘kill’ goes way beyond mine, the most real of the ‘for real,’ a demon’s ‘for real.’
Kazuo went silent and started drinking his coffee, because he valued his life.
However, once he had finally calmed down, Kazuo made a decision. It’s time to show that guy.
III
“Oh, what’s this for?”
It was a thick brown envelope. Manami’s eyes widened when Kazuo suddenly gave it to her.
“Open it up,” he said to her.
She looked inside the envelope cautiously.
Kazuo watched her clasp her hand over her mouth in surprise. He nodded, slowly and quietly.
Inside the envelope was 500,000 yen.
It was the amount she had borrowed from the loan shark.
“You can pay back your loan with it.”
“Oh no, Kazuo, I couldn’t! I just couldn’t let you do something like this!”
“It’s okay, really.”
Kazuo put both of his thumbs up, forming little brackets.
“I want you to be free from all this.”
Manami’s eyes were full of tears, which fell silently onto her cheeks. Then she ran off.
Yes, Kazuo thought. Run, run as fast as you can, run to your freedom!
After that, Manami disappeared.
Although she was meant to come to two lessons per week, no one had seen her at all.
Maybe she got into a dispute with the loan shark and got in some trouble—
Kazuo regretted not going with her to take care of it.
He snuck a look at her fitness club membership application form and tried to call her on her cell phone. But she did not answer.
Next he went to her address, which was also on the form. But there was no apartment building there.
Where on earth has she gone? Kazuo was visibly exhausted from worrying over her pointlessly.
“Hey, man, what’s with you? You haven’t been with it lately.”