Not long after stepping out of his son's apartment building, Takaki Harima spotted the colleague who had been dispatched to the ward alongside him. The man, who possessed a naturally easygoing demeanor, noticed Harima and raised a hand in greeting.
"First Class Takaki. Did you get a good look at your son's face? Even so, I'd appreciate it if you refrained from abandoning your post while on active duty."
"That is only because you were dragging out your news interview, First Class Fujiwara."
Fujiwara Kimura had slightly less field experience than Harima, but they were of the same rank and roughly the same age. Typically, the CCG structures its Investigators into two-man cells, pairing a Senior Investigator—First Class, Associate Special Class, or Special Class—with a Junior Investigator. However, Harima's recent partner, a Rank 1 Investigator, had just been promoted to First Class, resulting in their separation. Thus, until a new subordinate could be assigned, Harima had been temporarily partnered with a fellow First Class and deployed to this ward.
Stroking his prized beard, Fujiwara held up the case file in his hand.
"I did some digging while you were playing hooky. We have a location of interest. Not long ago, a turf war broke out between Ghoul factions in the neighboring 8th Ward. It seems an enforcer from one of those groups sustained heavy injuries and fled here to the 7th. The timeframe of his escape aligns far too perfectly with the murder of our bakery owner."
Harima carefully scanned the document, his eyes narrowing.
"I assumed it was just a brainless brute, given how brazenly it left behind traces of feeding. But if it was desperately hunting to heal its wounds, that explains the sloppiness."
"Exactly. Furthermore, we received an eyewitness report of a suspicious, bleeding individual descending into the sewers near Hamei Middle School shortly after the incident."
"Then our hunting ground is set. Let us move."
Harima and Fujiwara strode toward the sewer entrance, their pristine white overcoats billowing like specters in the wind. To the ignorant bystander, they might have looked like ordinary salarymen commuting to work early in the morning. But to the eyes of a Ghoul, their heavy, synchronized footsteps would have echoed like the relentless march of Grim Reapers.
"..."
"Hm? What has you so deep in thought?"
A Ghoul sweep was a highly perilous operation; an ambush could erupt from the shadows at any given second. Hyper-vigilance was a prerequisite for survival. Noticing Harima's strangely distracted demeanor, Fujiwara gently chided him.
"...It is nothing. Just… when I visited my son's apartment earlier, something bothered me."
"If the monsters who fear you as 'The Butcher' knew you were actually just a doting, overanxious father, the Ghouls you've slaughtered would probably roll over in their graves."
"Do not mock me. Is it not natural for a father to worry?"
Rebuking Fujiwara, a dark, heavy shadow fell over Harima's hardened features.
"He is a poor boy who lost his mother in that way. Even if I have been a failure of a father, I just want him to grow up safe and unharmed."
"I suppose that can't be helped. So, what was it that was bothering you?"
"...A baby."
"...What?"
Hearing Harima's muttered response, Fujiwara furrowed his brow in confusion.
"It was incredibly faint, but… my son's apartment smelled of a baby."
Harima recalled the distant memory of when his own son was an infant. Back then, his home had carried that exact same, distinct scent. Had there been the smell of formula, he would have recognized it instantly, but even without it, the powdery, undeniable scent of baby powder and diapers had been wafting faintly through the apartment.
"A baby? Isn't your son a high schooler? Why on earth would there be a baby in his apartment? You must have mistaken a scent drifting over from a neighbor's place."
"Is that it...?"
Even so, my son's behavior was strangely erratic today...
The lingering suspicion brushed against his mind, but he was immediately forced to discard the thought. They had arrived at their destination. The cavernous tunnel of the sewer gaped open like a waiting maw, exhaling a foul, damp stench reminiscent of a wild beast's breath.
"...Here it is. Blood."
Taking only a few steps into the gloom, Fujiwara spotted the splatter. He crouched, wiping his gloved fingers over the concrete.
"It's drying, but it hasn't flaked yet. It's fresh."
"So it really is hiding down—"
"Fujiwara! Above you!!"
Harima's roar tore through the tunnel. Fujiwara instinctively snapped his head up. A patch of shadow clinging to the mold-stained ceiling abruptly swelled, detaching itself and plummeting straight toward Fujiwara's head.
It was a man in his early thirties, clutching a grievous wound on his abdomen with one hand. In his eyes blazed the irrefutable proof of his nature: a burning, crimson Kakugan. And erupting from his lower back, crashing down like a blood-red guillotine, was his Kagune!
CLANG!!!
The Kagune hurtling toward Fujiwara shrieked against metal and was violently deflected. Shifting his gaze, Fujiwara saw a dented steel briefcase flying through the air, having intercepted the lethal blow. The briefcase was thoroughly smashed and gaping open, but it was completely empty.
Which meant its contents had already been drawn.
Clack-clack-clack!!
Even before the rapid, mechanical sound of assembly finished echoing, Harima lunged at the Ghoul, who was still suspended in mid-air. Gripped securely in Harima's hands was a massive blade, so large it seemed to dwarf his own body. It resembled a monstrous, brutal cleaver used for slaughtering cattle. Forged through countless bloody wars to rip through their impenetrable flesh, it was the ultimate weapon of execution—a Quinque!
CRASH!!!
Harima's Quinque clashed violently against the Ghoul's retaliatory Kagune strike, the concussive force blowing them more than ten meters apart. But the instant their feet touched the concrete, both combatants launched themselves at each other simultaneously.
BOOOM-RUMBLE-RUMBLE!!!
A frantic, blood-soaked deathmatch erupted in the span of a single breath.
The Ghoul's Kagune expanded massively like a mythical serpent, pulverizing the very concrete pillars supporting the sewer as it lashed out. Harima met it head-on, swinging his massive Quinque with terrifying, monstrous physical power.
In the man fiercely battling the monster, there was absolutely no trace of the anxious father from just moments ago. Only a feral, overflowing bloodlust remained—a ravenous urge to butcher the creature before him, to systematically dismantle its flesh, shatter its bones, and spill its entrails.
"GRAAAAAAHHH!!!!"
Pushed to the brink by the relentless Investigator while already suffering from grievous injuries, the Ghoul's patience completely shattered. Howling in rage, he unleashed a massive, sweeping horizontal strike.
Expanded to its absolute limit, the Kagune was thicker than the sewer's structural pillars. The attack, steeped in lethal intent, annihilated everything in its path, obliterating concrete and carving into the walls. Fujiwara hit the deck, narrowly evading the devastating sweep.
As the debris settled, Fujiwara frantically searched for Harima, but his partner was nowhere to be seen. Had he been caught in that catastrophic blow? Convinced of Harima's death, the Ghoul turned its attention to Fujiwara, its murderous glare declaring he was next.
That was the Ghoul's fatal mistake.
SQUELCH!!
"Gah-hk!!"
A fountain of raw sewage erupted from the canal behind the monster as a massive butcher knife brutally impaled the Ghoul straight through the back. The Ghoul shrieked, choking on its own blood.
"No matter how sharp your Ghoul senses are, it seems even you can't sniff out prey submerged in raw sewage."
Harima hadn't been hit by the Kagune. He had intentionally plunged himself into the rancid, contaminated sewer water to conceal his presence. To secure a kill, he had thrown himself into the vile filth without a microsecond of hesitation. Such deranged, single-minded obsession sent a profound chill down even his partner Fujiwara's spine.
SQUELCH!! CRACK!!
Torquing his waist violently, Harima wrenched the Quinque free from the Ghoul's spine. Then, using the coiled momentum of his entire body, he channeled every ounce of kinetic force into the blade and swung with everything he had.
Accompanied by the sickening crunch of shattering vertebrae, the Ghoul's decapitated head soared into the darkness.
But he didn't stop there.
SQUELCH!! CRUNCH!! SQUASH!! SLICE!! SNAP!! STAB!!
As if possessed by a wrathful demon, Harima relentlessly hacked into the Ghoul's lifeless corpse. He shredded the flesh, pulverized the bones, and trampled the organs into bloody pulp, yet continued his systematic butchery as if the total annihilation of the body wasn't enough.
The light of sanity only returned to his pitch-black, dilated pupils when Fujiwara cautiously approached and placed a firm hand on his shoulder.
"That is enough. They are monsters, but they are still sentient beings. There is no need to desecrate a corpse to this extent."
"Nonsense. Do they extend such courtesies to us when they slaughter our kind? There is absolutely zero value in showing these things sympathy."
Harima spat the words with glacial hostility, but he ceased his butchery and retracted his Quinque. Seeing the way Harima morphed into an entirely different, terrifying entity whenever he confronted Ghouls was something Fujiwara could never get used to. He let out a weary sigh.
"You truly don't have a single shred of mercy for them. Isn't it about time you started thinking about retirement? With an attitude like that, will you ever be able to hang up your coat in peace?"
"I have no intention of taking this coat off until the day I die."
Gripping his pristine white overcoat tightly with blood-soaked hands, Harima glared down at the unrecognizable heap of gore and growled.
"I will slaughter every last Ghoul in this world with my own two hands. Whether they are men or women, the elderly… or even infants. I will kill them all...!"
"Gasp?!"
Having tried to sleep off the sheer exhaustion induced by my father's ambush visit, I violently jolted awake from a horrific nightmare.
"Ughhh... I just had a dream where Dad was charging at Eto with a cleaver..."
Praying to every god that it wasn't a prophetic dream, I frantically searched the room for Eto.
"Eto? Where are—"
"Daa?"
I froze mid-sentence. My eyes locked onto the disastrous scene before me: utilizing her innate, monstrous Ghoul strength, Eto had effortlessly punched a massive, gaping hole straight through the center of my laptop.
"ETOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"