Tatara and Takatsuki Sen had always moved together.
He had been observing the battle from not far away the entire time.
The reason he hadn't intervened was simple: Takatsuki Sen had never liked anyone interfering while she fought.
That was her pride as the leader of Aogiri Tree.
"TATARA !"
"I want to kill that human. He actually injured me!"
The furious voice of Takatsuki Sen rang out from the monster's maw.
Hearing the helicopter blades drawing closer, Tatara glanced once more at Fushimi Kyo before replying calmly:
"Next time."
"It's time to leave the 20th Ward. We still have many things to do."
"ROAR !"
The monster let out one final roar toward Kyo.
Then, from its back, it ripped out four kagune spikes over a meter long and hurled them at him with full force.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh!
The four kagune tore through the air with piercing shrieks.
"Hmph."
With a cold snort, Kyo's body blurred like a phantom, effortlessly dodging all four attacks.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
The kagune slammed into the ground, instantly blasting out four massive craters, each over five meters in diameter.
Seeing her attack fail, the monster's single eye cast one last icy glance at Kyo.
One claw reached out, grabbing Tatara.
In the next instant, the massive body rose into the air and flew off into the distance.
It was clear that the previous attack had been nothing more than Takatsuki Sen venting her frustration
she knew very well that such attacks posed little threat to Kyo.
Kyo watched as the silhouette of the One-Eyed Owl shrank into the night sky, until it finally vanished.
He let out a slow breath.
Whoosh.
His figure flickered, and he too disappeared from the scene.
Not long after, Shinohara Yukinori and the others arrived at the park by helicopter.
Looking at the devastated battlefield, their expressions turned grim.
"Special Class Shinohara… that fight must've been brutal,"
Amon Koutarou said as he scanned the surroundings.
The massive craters.
The huge trees snapped in half.
The level of destruction was horrifying.
"To force the Owl into full kakuja transformation…"
"His opponent's strength is truly terrifying," Shinohara said in a low voice.
His gaze lingered on the blood splattered across the ground.
That amount of blood was clearly not something an ordinary human could lose and still survive.
"To actually injure the Owl…"
"Who in the world was fighting her?"
Shinohara fell into deep thought.
Finally, he turned to Amon.
"Amon, report this to headquarters."
"Request access to all classified data regarding the Owl."
"This sudden appearance…"
"I'm afraid it's not something simple."
The next day.
D-City: A Private Hospital
On a hospital bed, Kaneki Ken suddenly opened his eyes.
One eye looked normal.
The other, however, had turned into a ghoul's Kakugan.
There was no escaping fate.
He had still become that existence
The One-Eyed Kaneki Ken.
"I… I didn't die?"
"I'm… still alive?"
He stared blankly at his surroundings, quickly realizing he was in a hospital room.
"My body was pierced through in so many places… Miss Rize…"
The memory of that night flooded back.
The terror in his eyes deepened.
"She should be dead… right?"
In his fading consciousness, he clearly remembered Rize being crushed by steel beams falling from the rooftop buried alive.
Even for a ghoul, survival should have been impossible.
Grrrr
A wave of hunger surged through him.
Kaneki turned his head and noticed a lavish meal placed neatly on the bedside table.
"…Is this for me?"
He picked up a piece of bread that looked delicious and brought it to his mouth.
"Huh?"
The moment he bit down
"It tastes like rotten catfish… fishy and disgusting."
He hurriedly tossed the bread back onto the plate.
"Did the food go bad?"
But the bread's appearance was clearly fresh.
Unwilling to give up, he picked up a rice ball and took a bite.
After chewing only a few times
"URGH !"
A violent wave of nausea surged up.
He grabbed a trash can from beside the bed and vomited everything he had eaten.
"What's going on…?"
"Did my sense of taste break?"
The thought alone made Kaneki's face turn deathly pale.
At the same time
Inside a concealed monitoring room within the hospital.
A white-haired man in a lab coat stared intently at the screen.
Displayed on it was Kaneki's hospital room.
This man was Kanou Akihiro
the one who had performed Kaneki's organ transplant surgery.
The mastermind behind Kaneki's transformation into a one-eyed ghoul.
A doctor by profession,
a former CCG ghoul dissector,
and the instigator behind countless secret experiments.
In the original timeline, he had created one-eyed ghouls such as Kaneki Ken, the Yasuhisa twins, Amon Koutarou, Takizawa Seidou, Furuta Nimura, and others.
At this moment, Kanou was carefully jotting notes into a notebook.
"Organ transplant successful."
"Experiment proves that transplanting partial ghoul organs into a human can create a new species, the one-eyed ghoul."
"One-eyed ghouls show strong rejection toward human food."
"Preliminary hypothesis: one-eyed ghouls must consume human flesh to obtain nutrition."
"Hypothesis requires further verification."
(Conclusion status: Pending)
Kanou had conducted many such transplant experiments before.
All had failed.
Kaneki Ken was his first true success.
The only question was
Would this specimen grow exactly as he envisioned?
"I should go see my first child."
Kanou closed his notebook and walked toward the door.
"Kaneki-san?"
A young nurse pushed the door open.
Kaneki immediately lay back down, curling himself under the blanket and pretending to be asleep.
The nurse pulled the curtain aside and frowned.
"That's strange… he barely ate anything."
"Oh, right," she added casually,
"Kaneki-san, your friend came to visit you again today."
Kaneki's body visibly trembled beneath the blanket.
The nurse frowned slightly, cleared away the meal tray, and turned to leave.
At that moment, Kanou entered the room.
"How are you feeling, Kaneki-kun?"
He soon finished a full examination.
"Hm… I heard you haven't eaten anything since being hospitalized," he said thoughtfully.
"But your body doesn't seem to show any problems."
Kaneki lowered his head, his voice filled with gloom.
"Doctor… my sense of taste feels wrong."
"Taste?" Kanou asked calmly.
"Yes. Everything I eat smells fishy and disgusting."
A faint smile curved Kanou's lips.
He knew exactly why.
But he still spoke gently.
"It's alright. It may just be psychological trauma."
"After all, you went through something extremely frightening."
"As long as you cooperate with my treatment, things will gradually improve."
"These things can't be rushed."
As he spoke, Kanou's gaze toward Kaneki burned with excitement.
"I'll come again."
With that, Kanou left the room.
Walking down the hospital corridor, his brows furrowed slightly.
"The next stage…"
"Do I discharge him and observe whether he can suppress his hunting instinct?"
"Or do I move him to the experimental facility and test how external stimuli affect his condition?"
"Such precious material…"
"There are so many hypotheses worth verifying."
"Kaneki Ken…"
"You really are something to look forward to."
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