A violent surge of vertigo washed over me.
I couldn't tell if it was the result of the police car's sudden metamorphosis into a roller coaster of mangled steel, or if the sight of the corpse before me had finally triggered a full-blown panic attack.
But I couldn't afford to break. Even as the world spun in a dizzying blur, I forced my eyes open, refusing to succumb.
Get a grip. A lethal monster was less than a meter away. Unless I clawed my way toward a sliver of survival, my life would end the moment this chaos settled.
The vehicle swerved erratically, slithering across the asphalt like a wounded snake. A single pebble on the road could flip us, or worse, send us careening into the sidewalk crowded with civilians.
The speed was reaching a breaking point. The younger officer—now little more than a headless torso—slumped forward, his weight pinning the accelerator to the floor. The velocity would only climb. Between the air pressure and the mangled frame, the doors wouldn't budge, and attempting to dive through a shattered window at this speed was suicide.
In the opposite seat, the middle-aged officer… no, the Ghoul wearing a policeman's skin, simply sighed. He made no move to intervene in the trajectory of our runaway train. Was it the confidence of his kind? The knowledge that a Ghoul's physical density was high enough to walk away from a high-speed collision with nothing but scratches?
He showed no remorse for the junior partner he had personally slaughtered after years of working side-by-side. Perhaps he was merely calculating how to untangle himself from this inconvenient mess.
Think.
Think.
Is there a way out? A path to survival?
I see it!
I lunged forward, thrusting my upper body out of the seat. I wedged myself into the cramped space between the car's roof and the headless remains of the officer, ignoring the crimson geyser that drenched me as I reached for the wheel with my bound hands.
"...!"
The Ghoul watched my erratic movements with wide, startled eyes. He didn't react immediately—perhaps out of confusion, or perhaps out of the arrogance that nothing I did could possibly threaten him.
That arrogance gave me the opening I needed.
I gripped the wheel and wrenched it with every ounce of strength I possessed.
𝘚𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘦𝘦𝘦𝘤𝘩…!!!
The sound of tires screaming against the pavement pierced my eardrums, a metallic wail that felt like it was shredding my brain. I clung to the steering wheel as if it were a lifeline, fighting the centrifugal force that threatened to hurl me through the glass.
"What do you think you're—!"
The Ghoul finally moved, reaching out to seize me, but he was too late. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow looming over the car like a falling curtain.
It was a truck, barreling down the opposite lane.
𝘒𝘢-𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘰𝘰𝘰𝘰𝘰𝘰𝘰𝘮!!!!!!!
The sound of steel buckling and glass shattering consumed the world, and my consciousness spiraled down into a void of absolute chaos.
A dull, distant murmuring.
I clawed my way back to consciousness through the heavy fog. My head throbbed with a rhythmic, pulsing pain, and bile rose in my throat, threatening to spill over. My vision was shrouded, white and hazy, as if a thick mist had settled behind my eyelids. For a terrifying moment, I feared I had been blinded.
The murmurs grew louder. The voices of a crowd.
Relying on my remaining senses, I crawled toward the sound. Eventually, the oppressive weight of the wreckage fell away as I dragged myself out into the open air. I rubbed my eyes, blinking rapidly until the world began to resolve into focus.
The first thing I saw was a wall of people standing on the sidewalk, their eyes wide with shock as they stared at me. I turned my head, seeing a trail of glass shards and twisted metal.
Behind me lay the police car—or what was left of it. The vehicle was a flattened mass of scrap metal, flipped onto its roof like a crushed insect. Behind it sat a truck, its front end completely caved in.
I had survived. It had been a reckless, idiotic gamble, but I was alive and relatively—
"…Not quite."
𝘛𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘭𝘦.
A streak of warm, red liquid blurred my vision. I touched my forehead, my fingers coming away wet with my own blood.
"What about… him?"
I looked back at the wreckage. The side where the Ghoul had been sitting had taken the full brunt of the truck's impact. The passenger side was non-existent, a mangled heap of iron. No matter how durable a Ghoul's body was, surviving that seemed impossible.
That hollow hope lasted less than five seconds.
𝘛𝘩𝘶𝘥!!!
A heavy piece of metal—what used to be a door—was kicked aside, and a loathsome shadow rose from the rear of the wreckage. His cap was gone, his face a mask of blood, yet the wounds were already vanishing beneath the skin, knit together by his monstrous regenerative factor.
The Ghoul turned his gaze toward me. His eyes were burning like molten lava, radiating a pure, calculated malevolence.
"For a split second, you actually had my heart racing. I thought you were just perceptive, but I didn't realize you were this cunning. My luck truly is rotten today… to think I picked a brat like you."
I pressed my hand against the gash on my forehead, playing his words back in my mind.
Picked? Me?
I pieced together the fragments of the puzzle. Our first encounter at the checkpoint. The bloodstain that had made me a suspect. The fact that the murder case had been handed over to the CCG because Ghoul secretions were found at the scene.
The picture was finally complete, and a white-hot fury surged through my veins.
"It was you… You framed me for it!!!"
Everything had been a spiral of misfortune since that midnight checkpoint. I had been his target from the very beginning.
"You committed those murders! You accidentally left your own trace at the scene, and you knew the Ghoul Investigators would come sniffing around! So you picked me as a scapegoat! You wanted to turn the investigation into a 'human crime disguised as a Ghoul attack'! You planted that blood at the checkpoint!"
The bloodstain—the single most damning piece of evidence—hadn't come from my guitar case. He had planted it there during the search to link me to the crime.
"Correct."
𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘱. 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘱. 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘱.
The Ghoul gave a sarcastic, half-hearted round of applause, a sneer curling his lips.
"You're likely the first human to ever surprise me this much. But now what? My original plan was to lock you away and torture you until you wrote a suicide note confessing to everything… but since you've pushed me this far, I'll just have to kill you here. If I let you live any longer, there's no telling what other tricks you'll pull."
The Ghoul shook his head as if he were truly inconvenienced.
"My identity exposed to a junior I've worked with for years. Nearly killed by a mere human. Today is just a string of bad luck. I certainly hope nothing else goes wrong."
"Don't give me that. If anyone should be lamenting their luck, it's me!"
Do you have any idea how much you've ruined my life? Being branded a murder suspect, Eto vanishing, being hauled off by the police, and now facing a monster. If it were possible, I wanted nothing more than to drive my fist into his smug, bloodied face.
𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘱.
He vaulted over the wreckage and began to close the distance. I shifted into a defensive stance, my voice tight.
"Hey, are you sure about this? There are witnesses everywhere. You're going to try and kill me in broad daylight?"
A crowd of onlookers had gathered due to the accident. Revealing his Ghoul nature here should have been a death sentence for his career and his life. But the Ghoul merely grinned.
"Why wouldn't I? Have you forgotten what my job is?"
I felt the blood drain from my face as I saw what he held in his hand. A service pistol.
𝘉𝘢𝘯𝘨――!!!
He aimed the gun at the sky and squeezed the trigger. For police-issue firearms, the first round is a blank meant for warning; the ones following are live ammunition. It was a signal to prepare the next bullet—and a signal to control the narrative.
He leveled the gun at me with a steady, practiced hand.
"Halt! You vicious criminal! I won't let you lay a finger on these citizens!"
He was right. Regardless of his true nature, to the eyes of the public, he was a brave officer of the law. And I, with my hands bound in steel, was nothing but a dangerous felon fleeing custody.
The murmuring of the crowd shifted, turning into a low hum of fear and hostility directed at me. In this situation, I could scream that he was a Ghoul until my lungs gave out, and not a soul would believe me.
"Damn it!!"
I didn't wait. I turned and bolted.
I had to get out of here. These people wouldn't protect me from the Ghoul; they would only cheer for my execution. I lunged toward the area where the crowd was thinnest. Terrified by the "dangerous criminal" charging at them, the onlookers scrambled to give me a wide berth.
An alleyway. If I could make it into that alley, I could break his line of sight.
"Not so fast!"
The Ghoul swung his aim toward my retreating back. The pull of the trigger and my desperate dive into the mouth of the alley happened almost simultaneously.
𝘉𝘢𝘯𝘨!!
The gunshot echoed through the street.
Koma threw himself forward, but his timing was inherently flawed. No human could outrun the velocity of a bullet.
The Ghoul, watching his target, slowly lowered the smoking pistol. He clicked his tongue and stared at the entrance of the alley where Koma had vanished.
The bullet, which should have pierced Koma's spine, had been deflected by a heavy steel sign standing at the alley's entrance. Koma was gone, swallowed by the shadows of the narrow passage.
The Ghoul let out a weary, frustrated sigh.
"My luck really is rotten today."