The stench of rainwater, mixed with the metallic smell of rust-like blood, spread thickly in the air of the abandoned warehouse.
Outside, the buzzing sirens of the CCG wailed.
Tsukino Kiyoi leaned against the mottled wall, her pale face looking like a patch of melting snow in the dim light.
The wound on her abdomen was horribly exposed, dark red blood soaking through her clothes and dripping onto the dust-covered floor.
It was a trauma left by a quinque, and having exhausted her strength, she could no longer regenerate.
She lifted her heavy eyelids and looked at the boy kneeling beside her.
Fourteen-year-old Kanagawa was physically thin, but his face was already breathtakingly handsome. Yet, at the moment, it was devoid of color, his lips tightly pressed as he futilely tried to stem the ceaseless bleeding with torn scraps of cloth.
"Hey, Okuga..."
Her voice was very soft, tinged with blood, like a thread that could snap at any moment.
Kanagawa's movements froze abruptly. He didn't look up, instead pressing harder on the wound, as if this could forcibly keep life within her body.
"Eat me."
When those words fell, the only sound left in the warehouse was the monotonous drumming of rain on the rusted tin roof.
Kanagawa slowly raised his head. In his unusual kakugan, the deep red that had been settled now shook violently, like a deep pool disturbed by a thrown stone.
He looked at the face that had accompanied him for two years and given him a second life. A mix of panic and fury surged in his chest like a wild beast.
"You..." His voice was terribly dry, barely coherent. "What nonsense are you talking about?"
"I said, eat me." Tsukino Kiyoi forced a faint, exhausted smile, but her eyes held a heartbreaking calmness. "I'm dying soon... it mustn't go to waste. Let you live, alright?"
"No!" Kanagawa roared suddenly, as if pierced by an invisible needle.
It was the first time he had erupted in such intense emotion toward his sister, the only sanctuary he had in the world.
He grabbed her cold shoulders, his knuckles white from the force.
"Didn't you say it?!" The boy's hoarse voice echoed in the empty warehouse, carrying desperate accusation.
"You said there were many places in this world you hadn't seen! You said you wanted to see the ocean, the cherry blossoms, and what the sky looked like without bloodshed! You said... we would live together, safely!"
His roar hit the walls and bounced back into his ears, an empty echo.
Why... why would she say such a thing?
Fragments of memory surged uncontrollably into his mind, cold and sharp.
They belonged to the original meaning of the name 'Kanagawa'—a land forgotten by the gods.
His twelve brief years of life were condensed into the faded walls of the orphanage, the pungent smell of disinfectant, and endless sickness.
He possessed an overly beautiful face, but in the world of unruly children, it was like a kind of original sin, inviting only escalating jealousy and bullying.
"Weakling!"
"What do you have besides that face?"
The fists landing on him didn't hurt much; they were far easier to bear than the internal spasms when his illness flared up.
What was truly cold were the indifferent eyes of the bystanders, the impatient sighs of the director, and, when he curled up in the corner of his bed late at night, the vast, silent world outside the window that had never shown him kindness.
His final memory was of a cold morning, his lungs struggling like a broken bellows, his vision gradually blurring and darkening.
There were no tears, no farewells. He quietly curled up in the corner of the storage room, feeling life slowly drain from his frail body.
Let it end like this.
He had no attachment to that world.
Then came the boundless darkness, and in the darkness, a pair of scarlet, hungry eyes suddenly lit up—his own eyes.
When he regained consciousness, he was lying in a strange room that smelled faintly of soapberry.
The feeling of weakness that had plagued him for twelve years had miraculously vanished, replaced by a strange, surging sense of power, and an even stranger, heart-wrenching hunger.
"You're awake?" A clear, yet slightly guarded female voice sounded.
He turned his head and saw a black-haired girl standing in the doorway, about sixteen or seventeen years old. Her face was delicate, but her eyes held a composure beyond her age and... a hint of imperceptible sorrow.
She was Tsukino Kiyoi.
"Who... am I?" he heard himself ask hoarsely.
The girl walked closer, carefully examining his eyes—the eyes of a Ghoul.
"I don't know. I found you next to a garbage heap; you were... in a very bad state." She paused. "Do you remember anything?"
He shook his head blankly.
The memories of his past life were shrouded in thick fog, leaving only a few vague fragments of pain and the name 'Kanagawa,' which carried misfortune.
And regarding this bizarre new world, he knew nothing.
It was Tsukino Kiyoi who taught him everything, little by little.
She told him this was Tokyo, explained the conflict between humans and Ghouls, and informed him that the hunger was called 'rc cells hunger,' and the food they needed to survive... was human flesh.
"You must be joking..." He vomited violently back then, even though his stomach was empty.
Tsukino Kiyoi simply handed him a cup of water in silence.
"You'll get used to it." Her tone was flat, but a shadow of shared suffering passed through her eyes.
She took him in.
This girl, whose parents had been killed by CCG Investigators and who survived by hiding alone, was still living under the shadow of revenge and the pain of losing loved ones, yet she held up a small, precarious piece of sky for him.
She taught him how to control his kakugan, how to suppress his aura, and how to find 'safe' food in that concrete jungle—those forgotten suicide victims.
"Why... did you save me?" He had asked more than once.
Tsukino Kiyoi, who was wiping the photograph of her parents on the table, paused but didn't turn around.
"Maybe it's because... seeing you lying there was like seeing myself back then." Her voice was very soft. "Being alone is too cold."
---
"So, don't say those words again!" Kanagawa broke free from his memories, glaring with red-rimmed eyes at Kiyoi, whose breathing was growing weaker, his voice choked with tears.
"You picked me up from the garbage heap! You told me there was still a reason to live in this world! You were the one who said... you wanted to see the beauty of this world!"
Tsukino Kiyoi listened quietly, her eyes gentle and sorrowful.
A violent cough made her curl up, and she spat out a small mouthful of darkened blood.
"Yes... I wanted to see..." She gasped, her voice growing fainter. "But Okuga... I don't think... I can do it..."
"You can!" Kanagawa gripped her cold hand tightly, as if to transfer strength and conviction to both her and himself. "Didn't we promise? We're going to live together! You promised me!"
He remembered them sharing a cup of coffee crammed into their tiny apartment; he remembered her clumsily straightening his collar, cautioning him to be careful outside;
He remembered one night when she looked at the moon outside the window and whispered, "Okuga, let's find a place where no one knows us and open a small flower shop, living peacefully..."
Those trivial yet warm moments were his only lighthouse in this cruel world.
And now, that light was about to go out.
Outside the warehouse, hurried footsteps and the low static of a communicator could faintly be heard.
The CCG Investigators had caught up.
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