Hiro ignored Eto's shock. Instead, he lowered his gaze to the dark brown liquid swirling in his cup and threw out an even sharper question.
"Taking a step back, even if I agreed to you... what makes you so certain that I could kill Arima Kishou? That I would definitely take that position?"
The words fell like a bucket of cold water over her head.
Yoshimura Eto froze in place. Beneath her bandages, her lips parted slightly, yet no sound came out.
Yes... why?
She suddenly realized that she had never truly thought about this question rationally.
From the first time she met Hiro, an almost instinctive intuition had screamed wildly in her heart.
It was him. This mysterious man might be the key to breaking the deadlock, the single ray of light that could make that difficult plan succeed.
The intuition had come so fiercely and without reason, like a beast in the dark catching the scent of its own kind, like a moth instinctively flying toward flame.
She had been drawn to the unfathomable quality about him, to the point that she had willfully placed all her hopes upon this vague and illusory "feeling."
But now, as Hiro laid out the most realistic question before her without disguise, she finally realized that the foundation for her judgment had been nothing more than baseless intuition.
She opened her mouth, trying to find some supporting evidence. His strength? The strange abilities he had displayed? The hidden trump cards no one yet knew?
But when the words reached her lips, they all felt pale and powerless.
In the end, she could only remain silent.
Hiro watched the silent Eto, his knuckles rhythmically tapping against the tabletop.
"You and I both know that the 'One-Eyed King' has never been a specific 'person.'"
His voice was steady and clear, echoing in the quiet reception room.
"Whenever the world falls into chaos and darkness, the One-Eyed King descends upon the world, bringing hope and change."
He lifted the coffee cup but did not drink, letting the bitter aroma linger at the tip of his nose.
His tone suddenly shifted, carrying a trace of cold mockery.
"Since ancient times, the most effective way for those in power to manipulate people has been to establish a common enemy.
That enemy can be a sanctimonious politician, a glamorous celebrity, or a heinous terrorist. Who it is does not matter."
His gaze swept over Eto and the silent Tatara beside her.
"What matters is that once the public's attention, fear, and hatred are firmly focused on a single target, those ignorant ones unwilling to think will gladly believe that this is the only 'truth.'
They will unite in shared hostility under incitement, gather around an illusory goal, and in doing so ignore the real conflicts and injustices behind it."
He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice, yet making it even more forceful.
"The 'One-Eyed King' you seek... is it truly the embodiment of hope that brings change,
or is it merely the 'perfect enemy' deliberately pushed to the front stage to unite hearts and divert attention?"
The grand plan woven together by Yoshimura Eto and Arima Kishou was, in essence, a gamble.
Its core structure appeared clear. Eto, under the identity of the "One-Eyed Owl," would become the spiritual totem of the ghouls, while Arima would play the role of the invincible "White Reaper" in the human camp.
In the end, a powerful ghoul would defeat Arima in full public view and be crowned the "One-Eyed King," uniting the faith and strength of all ghouls.
At that moment, the truth behind the root of all tragedy, the Washuu Clan, would be exposed to the world, establishing a common enemy for both races.
Using that as an opportunity, over long years, humanity and ghouls would be guided toward a difficult yet possible coexistence.
The key to this plan lay in the chosen "King."
In theory, Yoshimura Eto, as a hybrid of human and ghoul, was the most ideal candidate for the throne.
Her bloodline itself was a bridge, naturally persuasive to both camps.
However, the cruelty of the plan was that the "King" had to possess absolute strength.
They had to personally end the "Invincible Reaper" Arima Kishou, thereby becoming the irreplaceable symbol of victory and absolute hope in the hearts of ghouls.
Unfortunately, Eto knew clearly that she could not do it. She could not cross the mountain that was Arima Kishou.
Her strength was insufficient to support the most glorious coronation of this plan.
Therefore, in the originally intended trajectory of fate, when Kaneki Ken appeared, possessing both bloodlines and limitless potential, they had seemed to see the only light in the darkness.
Kaneki became the repository of all their hopes, a "perfect vessel" carefully cultivated and eventually pushed onto the altar of destiny.
However, in this worldline, Kaneki Ken had not appeared as scheduled.
The gears of the plan stalled. Having lost the predetermined "King," the grand blueprint became empty talk. They could only fall into a long wait, moving forward step by step in the fog.
Until Hiro appeared.
His arrival was like a meteor suddenly crashing into a still lake, shattering the silence.
Although he did not possess the symbolic hybrid identity, he brought a more direct and heart-shaking variable.
Powerful strength. Strength that might be enough to shake, or even overwhelm, Arima Kishou.
To Yoshimura Eto, it was like an oasis suddenly appearing in a desert of despair.
Though Hiro was not the originally intended "key," the power he displayed was itself an entirely new possibility.
A possibility capable of forcibly breaking the deadlock.
Thus, hope was rekindled. Eto's gaze inevitably locked firmly onto him.
Perhaps a common enemy like the Washuu Clan alone would be far from enough.
The frozen hatred and suspicion between the two races would not melt so easily.
Therefore, the final step of the plan was to awaken the "Dragon" sleeping deep beneath the earth.
Only by letting it descend upon the world, bringing indiscriminate and unstoppable true despair, would catastrophe hanging over everyone's heads blur the boundaries of race and stance before the instinct of survival.
Only under an absolute crisis capable of destroying everything would humans and ghouls be forced to set aside a century of blood debt, truly look at one another, and seek a slim chance of survival.
This was the final foundation for the plan's success, the most cruel and most effective cornerstone.
To exchange a despair that swept across the world for a faint possibility of coexistence.
Yoshimura Eto remained silent.
Hiro's words were like a cold surgical blade, precisely cutting open the layers of disguise that had covered the truth for a century.