"So that happened."
"Is that really something you can just brush off with 'so that happened'...? Eto could have been seriously hurt."
Somewhere at an intersection in the 20th Ward.
I was talking with Mister Kuzen inside a shop that was busy preparing for its grand opening.
Kuzen was placing teacups from a box onto the shelves, while I sat on a round stool that still had its plastic wrapping and rested my arms on the counter.
I was telling him about what had happened a few days ago.
At an age when she was already especially sensitive, Eto had nearly wounded herself through a misunderstanding while reading the note Ukina had left behind.
"I never expected the note I gave her to have that effect. I only wanted to pass on the traces of Ukina's life..."
Kuzen's back looked smaller than usual as he realized the impact the note had almost had on Eto.
He wasn't showing it openly, but I could tell he was crestfallen.
"Honestly, why are this father and daughter so awkward with each other...?"
As I sighed at the sight, I suddenly turned to the side.
"By the way, I thought you two had disappeared lately. What are you doing here?"
There stood two familiar figures.
Koma Enji.
Irimi Kaya.
Ghouls I'd gotten to know through a certain incident in the past.
They were supposedly the leaders of a prominent Ghoul group in the 20th Ward, but I didn't really care about that. To Eto and me, they were just familiar acquaintances who occasionally came over to drink coffee and chat.
As they moved boxes and other supplies around, they spoke up.
"Mr. Kuzen hired us."
"We can't keep wandering the back alleys forever, after all."
So that was why they'd been out of sight. They'd apparently decided to work with Kuzen.
Perhaps because they weren't used to the uniforms they were wearing, their movements were awkward—like dogs forced into clothes.
Watching them, I grew concerned and said to Kuzen, "Are those two really okay? I tried the coffee they made at our place before, and it was awful. I thought they'd poisoned it."
I let Enji's shout of "I'm practicing hard!" go in one ear and out the other, and listened to Kuzen's hearty laugh.
"That's exactly why I called you here. I wanted to hire you too."
"Hire me?"
"Not as a server, but simply as a teacher. Ghouls only need regular coffee, yes, but coffee isn't limited to just one kind, is it? There will be ordinary customers who want coffee with various additions, so we'll need someone with a palate that can match those tastes."
A café that only sold black coffee or coffee with sugar would look suspicious at a glance.
"Well, sure. I was just in the market for a new job anyway. If it's only those two, teaching them should be easy enough. ...Hm? Come to think of it, what about the other underlings?"
"Don't worry. They're all doing well."
"They've been living their own lives while still keeping the 20th Ward under control."
So even after getting jobs at the café, they were still the ward's old hands?
No, wait. Since they were the ones serving Kuzen, maybe Kuzen was the real old hand here.
I already knew he was an extraordinary Ghoul, but adding the element of being the ruler of a district made him feel even more impressive.
And now that extraordinary Ghoul was casually blending in among humans and running a café? Was that really okay?
"Come to think of it, there was something I wanted to ask you."
"What is it?"
"Ukina's note. What exactly was written in it?"
Apparently surprised by the question, Kuzen stopped his hand halfway to the next teacup.
"You didn't look?"
"Eto wouldn't show me. She said it was better if I didn't see it."
The organization Kuzen had once belonged to, and now opposed, could be just as much of a problem in Eto and my daily life as the CCG.
So I'd tried to read the note containing the information Ukina had gathered about the organization, but Eto had flatly refused.
She hid the note and said, "It's better not to know things like this," and had no intention of showing it to me.
That only made me more curious about what was in it, but forcibly snatching and reading the belongings of my nominal mother felt too much like crossing a line.
After hearing me out, Kuzen fell into thought for a moment, then nodded as if he understood.
"I see. So that was the child's answer?"
"What do you mean? Don't keep it to yourself—tell me too."
"The reason I gave the note to that child was partly to leave behind a trace of Ukina, yes, but there was another reason as well. It was a warning."
"A warning?"
For something handed down as a mother's keepsake, that sounded awfully grim.
Kuzen wiped down a fresh teacup as he continued, "I was telling that child about the enemy. Not so she could fight them, but so she could know what form the enemy takes and protect herself from them."
"That's exactly what I was thinking. So? Why can Eto know, but I can't?"
"Because she probably doesn't want to tell you. Once you learn that fact, 'the world changes.'"
"What? The world?"
What was that supposed to mean all of a sudden?
"An animal living on the ground would not know the shape of the earth. But a bird flying high above can look down and see the earth's form. And if the shape of the earth it thought it knew is completely detached from reality, the shock would surely be great."
"Mister Kuzen, did you maybe read Eto's novels? The way you circle around the truth while hiding it playfully is exactly how she tends to phrase things."
"Oh. So that child writes novels too? I'd like to read one sometime."
"She's not writing them seriously yet. Right now she's focusing on a novel for a contest. Anyway, back to the point—what is it that Eto learned, and what doesn't she want to tell me?"
Since it looked like the conversation was about to wander off, I cut it off and brought it back to the main issue.
Kuzen moved the cleaned teacup aside and said, "That child is worried about the 'cage' being revealed."
"Hm? Cage?"
What was that? I felt like I'd heard the word somewhere before.
Maybe because it had been so long, I couldn't quite bring it back.
"Eto's worried about whatever this cage is? What is it, anyway?"
"How could I possibly tell you that?"
"You old man..."
He was dangling the answer in front of me and then dodging it. Was he messing with me?
I shot him a sharp glare, but Kuzen only laughed it off lightly.
Maybe because he'd gained some breathing room after shaking off the organization and reuniting with Eto, he no longer had that hard-to-approach air from before. Instead, he carried the easy warmth of a friendly old man.
"If I told you everything here, it would go against that child's wishes. Since I failed to play the role of a father for so long, I really don't want to do that."
"Hey, get a grip. You're still just Acquaintance A. I'm Eto's dad."
"...Must you strike at such a painful point?"
"If you didn't want this, you shouldn't have made Eto attached to you for fifteen years in the first place. Right now, if an SSS-rated Ghoul showed up and shouted, 'Please give me your daughter!' I feel like I could rip his head off."
"If that day ever comes, I'll assist you."
...
For a few seconds, Kuzen and I exchanged looks in the air.
Smack!
Then our hands met in midair, and we shared a cheerful high-five.
Right after that, I heard Enji and Kaya talking as they moved a table and watched us.
"I'd only heard those two were friends, but this is the first time I've actually seen them together. They really are close. It's the first time I've seen Mr. Kuzen joking around like that."
"No, look at their faces. What they said at the end wasn't a joke. They were serious."
For some reason, Enji sounded impressed, while Kaya sounded utterly baffled.
***
I left the café and walked home.
As I walked, the word "cage" from my conversation with Kuzen kept circling in my head.
I was sure I'd heard it somewhere before.
If I thought hard enough, I felt like I could remember it, but it hovered just beyond the edge of my memory, which was irritating in a very specific way.
"Ah, that's what that woman said."
Then it suddenly came back to me.
Apparently it wasn't that I couldn't remember it—it was that my subconscious didn't want to.
It wasn't exactly a pleasant memory.
Shinaoto Minami.
A woman who gave poison and medicine in equal measure... though if I had to be precise, she gave far more poison than medicine.
She was currently wanted for cooperating with Ghouls and committing murder, and even after several years she still hadn't been caught.
Honestly, I couldn't even guess what she was doing or where she was now. She was that impossible to pin down.
Anyway, the last time I faced that woman Minami, she'd said something ominous.
—I'll make the one who created the 'cage' miserable. Then this time, a lot of people will finally be happy, won't they?
The cage she mentioned, and the cage Kuzen had just mentioned.
They were spoken by completely different people, but I had a strong feeling the meanings were connected.
Kuzen wouldn't explain what the cage was. He only said to wait until Eto had sorted out her feelings.
Would Shinaoto Minami tell me what the cage meant?
Forget it. I don't even know where she is, and if I ran into her, who knows what she'd do.
Her values were seriously warped. If you tried to deal with her using normal logic, you'd get burned badly.
I scratched my head hard to shake off Minami's presence and decided to simply wait for Eto's actions, just as Kuzen had said.
With that concern set aside, I quickened my pace toward home.
"..."
I frowned slightly, careful not to make it obvious.
It was because of the throbbing pain rising from the scar on my right arm.
...This really does seem like what Hitokawa said.
What had he said again?
That Ghouls were like cockroaches—if they didn't show up for a while, they multiplied terrifyingly fast, right?
It seemed that was true.
My body was reacting.
I'd just felt a Ghoul's gaze again. That made three times now.
The number of Ghouls has increased.
This wasn't normal.
Usually, a Ghoul's gaze was something you only happened to catch once in a while while walking down the street. That was how small the proportion of Ghouls hiding among humans usually was.
But for some reason, I'd run into it three times today.
It was proof that the number of Ghouls mixed in among people had increased.
Where the hell did these bastards come from? Did they really just sprout from the ground?
I glanced around at the people passing by.
A man walking while talking on his phone, schoolgirls chatting with friends, an old woman leaning on a cane and moving more slowly than everyone else, salarymen hurrying along with blank, featureless expressions.
People were diverse.
Even now, many of them were appearing in my field of vision, or disappearing from it.
Somewhere among them, Ghouls were mixed in.
A Ghoul looking at me wasn't necessarily dangerous. It was only reconnaissance.
Reconnaissance, wondering, 'Would there be any trouble if I made that one my prey?'
When they hadn't picked a target yet, the gaze would quickly fall away.
There were too many humans. There was no need to keep chasing after one specific person.
What they usually preferred was a human who seemed to go around alone and not fit in well with others. They kept rolling their eyes around, looking for someone who matched that condition, or came close to it.
In fact, the gazes from the first two Ghouls had dropped away quickly. They had probably just been looking over the humans and happened to land on me by chance.
But this third gaze wouldn't go away.
Whether I looked easy to target or just like a loner with no friends, it had been following me for a while now.
What do I do about this?
I still wasn't its target. Right now, it was only in the observation stage.
It wasn't enough to react sensitively and go asking for help from the 20th Ward's Ghouls or a CCG acquaintance.
But it was also true that I didn't want to carry this gaze all the way home.
While I was thinking about how to deal with it, a Western-style building happened to catch my eye.
A bell and a cross on the roof. A church.
Maybe I should take shelter there for a bit.
It seemed like a decent idea, so I headed that way.
The doors of a church are always open. To welcome wandering souls in need of the Lord's help.
I pushed open the church door, hoping to borrow a little grace and hide in the Lord's embrace for a while.
Apparently the Ghoul's gaze didn't want the trouble of following me inside the church, because the moment I opened the door, it dropped away.
"Phew..."
Once I was inside, I let out a sigh.
I liked the stillness of the empty church.
Planning to spend a little more time here until the Ghoul outside disappeared, I walked deeper inside.
From the outside, it had seemed like a fairly large building, and the chapel inside was just as spacious.
I approached the altar set at the far end of the chapel.
Beyond it, a statue of the Virgin Mary faced this way with a benevolent smile and outstretched arms.
With my memories of my mother already distant, I found myself drawn to the maternal presence in the statue and couldn't look away.
Creak.
"What can I do for you?"
But I must have stared too long.
Someone had entered the empty chapel and spoken to me.
"Ah, sorry. I saw the church and got curious, so I came in."
I tore my gaze away from the Virgin Mary and turned to look at the man in black priest's robes.
To my surprise, the priest at this church was a foreigner.
A middle-aged man with white hair, white skin, a white beard, and striking blue eyes. Despite his exotic appearance, Japanese flowed from his mouth with complete naturalness.
"No, it's fine. The Lord's embrace is fair to everyone. If you have any worries, you're always welcome to visit."
He welcomed me, an intruder in all but name, with a kind voice and no sign of displeasure.
Seeing that, I...
Damn it.
...swore inwardly.
I'd come into a church to avoid a Ghoul, and there was a Ghoul inside too.
Throb. Throb. Throb.
And not just any Ghoul—the one making my right arm's alarm scream at maximum volume.
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