After some time passed and Eto's crying finally subsided, I was able to look around.
We were on top of a flat, smoothed-out floor.
I could see water still rushing along a side passage, though the current hadn't fully settled yet. Eto must have hauled herself up from there.
Once I confirmed there was no one around except us, I asked her, "Eto, where are the others?"
"I don't know. After I got swept along by the current and dodged a big pillar that suddenly appeared in front of me, I couldn't see anyone anymore."
"A big pillar?"
Scratching my head, I pulled the carefully folded map from my chest.
The map was soaked through and looked like it might tear at any moment. I unfolded it carefully and scanned it with my fingers.
"Pillar, pillar... Ah, is this it?"
Following the long drainage channel that ran from the reservoir tank where rainwater collected all the way to the sea, I found a point on the map.
A side route split off around a pillar. It was a backup drainage path, built in case too much water had to be diverted at once.
Eto, who had protected me in the rough current, must have struck the pillar that was coming straight at us and, from the impact, drifted off the main flow into the side channel.
I looked around for any marker that might tell me where we were now.
Before long, I found faded lettering on one wall. Squinting in the dim light of the lamps, I could make out "16A-2."
Checking the map, I saw that we were almost at the edge of Ward 7. At this point, it was safe to say we had escaped the Ghoul Investigator encirclement.
"Then the people who took the main current instead of a side route like us are... probably around here."
What caught my eye was a wall blocking the route leading toward the port area of Ward 8. According to the map, steel grates had been installed there to catch the first wave of massive debris.
They were Ghouls, and they'd probably seen plenty of rough situations, so most of them should be able to get out of the current there. Even if they didn't, wouldn't they be caught by the second or third barrier after that?
Besides, there happened to be an exit leading outside near the first barrier.
It was a one-way route with no alternate branch, but if they could just get through there, Enji and Kaya's group should be able to escape safely.
The problem was us.
To get to where they were, we'd have to travel quite a distance. Riding the current would be fast, but after nearly dying once, I didn't want to go anywhere near the water again.
We could escape by another route, but the distance to the nearest exit from here and the distance to the Ghoul team were about the same. And there was always the chance Enji and Kaya were looking for us, unable to see us anywhere.
We'd only met recently, but I had a feeling those two would keep searching for Eto and me right up until the Ghoul Investigators were about to catch up.
"So we really have no choice but to regroup, huh?"
Eto seemed to have reached the same conclusion, because she took her eyes off the map and looked at me.
I nodded.
"Let's move quickly. The current's still strong, so the investigators probably won't be able to chase us immediately, but I don't want to stay here long."
"Yes. Me neither... Ah."
She swayed.
As I folded the map again and stood up, Eto tried to get up too. But after staggering once, she sank back down.
Thanks to drinking my blood, her wounds had mostly healed, but her stamina was still completely drained.
On top of that, she had wrapped her [Kagune] around my body to protect me in the torrent. She wasn't in any condition to move properly.
That blow she'd landed on me earlier had probably been her squeezing out every last bit of strength to swing her fist.
"You okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine. I can move... ugh."
Eto forced herself upright, but her legs were shaking like someone suffering from severe muscle pain.
With no other choice, I turned my back to Eto, pulled her in, and hoisted her onto my shoulders. Her startled voice stabbed into my ear.
"Wah?!"
"Rest for a bit. You went through way too much all at once today. It's only natural you'd be exhausted."
"Dad's exhausted too!"
"I'm at least waaaay better off than you. So just sit there quietly and lean on your dad's back."
I strode forward, not allowing any protest.
At first Eto struggled, insisting she'd walk on her own, but before long she seemed to give up and quietly let her body rest against my back.
The pleasant weight of Eto spread from my back through my whole body, and before I knew it, I was smiling. Hearing that little snort, Eto asked, "Hm? What's so funny?"
"Nothing, just... 'Wow, you've gotten a lot heavier~.'"
"...Dad just said something a man should never say to a woman."
"Huh...!? No! I didn't mean you've put on weight, I meant you've gotten taller—kek!!"
The warm family piggyback ride had somehow turned into a furious chokehold.
I pushed through the current and moved quickly.
The water falling through the city had washed down all the filth of Tokyo. Some of it was just dirt and dust, some of it was sewage, and some of it was someone's blood and flesh.
Arima was forcing his way through that disgusting water without so much as changing expression.
His momentum had weakened while he fought the Kakuja monster, but the current was still fierce. Even so, Arima kept his head above the rough surface and maintained steady breathing.
Whenever he nearly slammed into a wall, he kicked off it and slipped away lightly.
How long had it been like that?
He was about to pass along the main stream in front of a large pillar.
CRACK!
Arima suddenly thrust out his Quinque and slammed it into the pillar as it flashed past. His body, which had been flowing along with the murky water, came to a stop in the middle of the channel.
"..."
He said nothing, only moved his eyes and stared at the pillar where his Quinque had struck.
On one section of the huge pillar—big enough for more than ten adult men to encircle with their arms—there was a fresh-looking scrape.
A scratch like hundreds of needles had been joined together in a fan shape. Arima recognized it as a [Kagune], and not just any type, but [Ukaku].
What came to Arima's mind as he looked at it was what had happened just moments ago.
The Ghoul who had given orders to Maen and Kuroinu, and the Ghoul who had been riding on his back and blocked Arima's attack. He compared the shape of the [Kagune] he had only glimpsed for an instant with the marks carved into the wall.
With only those clues, Arima could tell that the Ghoul had slammed into this pillar and sharply changed direction.
The two Ghouls had veered off into a small side passage, not the main stream.
...No, were they even Ghouls in the first place?
"..."
Whoosh!
Arima tossed the thought somewhere into the back of his mind and changed direction as if rebounding off the pillar.
He was following the traces of Koma and Eto.
"...I'm sorry."
How long had we walked through the maze-like sewer, relying on a map so soaked it looked ready to tear apart at any second? Suddenly, the Eto riding on my back said that.
"Hm? For what? If you mean the chokehold earlier, you let go right before I blacked out, so I'm not really bothered."
"Not that. Well, I do feel bad about that too, since I got carried away and did it without thinking... but..."
Now that her head had cooled down, Eto seemed to be regretting what she'd just done, because she muttered the words out.
Maybe it was the influence of adolescence, but she seemed to know herself that she sometimes got hot-headed and acted impulsively.
After a brief silence, Eto opened her mouth again in a slightly trembling voice.
"...I could have killed it."
"...Who?"
Sensing this wasn't a casual topic, I slowed my pace a little and listened closely.
Eto gripped my shoulder tightly and said, "The monster that attacked us first."
"..."
She meant the Kakuja monster.
I recalled the moment when Eto and that thing first collided. I'd been too dazed from hitting the ground to watch the whole fight properly.
But I clearly remembered the final explosion of [Kagune].
It wasn't hard to guess that had been Eto's decisive blow.
"Back then... I hesitated. It was trying to kill me and Dad, but when I was about to finish it, I hesitated. If I hadn't, things wouldn't have gotten this tangled..."
Because she hadn't finished it off cleanly, Enji and Kaya's group got hurt, and the Ghoul Investigators burst in. And because of that, she'd dragged her dad into a desperate escape where he had to throw his life on the line.
That was what Eto was thinking now.
"I was scared. I thought that if I killed that monster, maybe I'd change too... So..."
"..."
Eto's trembling voice could go no further.
Because of her hesitation, she'd made a lot of people suffer. Eto was being tormented by that guilt.
And the reason she was saying this was probably because I was the only one she could show her feelings to.
She regretted what she'd done, but even after regretting it, she didn't know which way to go, so she was asking me.
What she should do.
If she faced the same situation again, what should she do? She was asking the person she trusted most in the world.
"This is a pretty heavy moment for parental responsibility."
No matter what I said here, Eto would follow it.
If I told her that taking a life was never acceptable, she'd obey. If I told her that sometimes she had to kill in order to protect herself, she'd obey that too.
And either way, it wasn't the answer I wanted.
"Eto..."
"Yes."
I could feel her body tensing, as if she already expected what I was about to say.
To that Eto, I said in a calm voice, "Growing up... is a real piece of shit."
"...Huh?"
Her dazed voice came back at my completely out-of-nowhere statement and absurd choice of words.
Sure, that probably wasn't something I should have said in front of Eto. But it couldn't be helped. Unless I used that exact expression, there was no way to sum up the sheer piece-of-shit-ness of adulthood in one line.
Let's just admit it. Adults are shit. Horrifically so.
"As you grow up, you start seeing the world in ways you couldn't when you were shorter. All kinds of unfair treatment and things that make you want to curse out loud sneak up on you, smack you in the back of the head, and run off."
"D-Dad?"
I could hear Eto's flustered voice. Like this wasn't what she'd been trying to hear.
But I ignored that and kept going.
"Eto, if I told you never to kill anyone, what would you do?"
"I-I'd do that."
"But you'd definitely regret it."
"Huh...? T-Then does that mean you have to know how to kill when you need to?"
It was almost painful how innocent Eto was, thinking that if one side was denied, the other side must be the answer.
I shook my head lightly and said, "No. Even if you killed someone while arguing that it was a necessary evil, you'd still regret it."
"Th-Then what am I supposed to do!"
"It's shit, right? That's what adulthood is."
Eto raised her voice, probably thinking I was joking around with wordplay while she was trying to be serious. To that Eto, I said, "There's no right answer in this world. It's common for a problem to be presented like a two-choice question, only for both options to turn out to be traps."
"How can you say something like that..."
"Everyone lives while running into that kind of unfairness. But they don't show it. Because they've gotten used to it. Or maybe because they've given up. Sometimes they even start thinking it's only natural, saying things like, 'That's just how life is, isn't it?' But most people still believe there has to be a right choice."
People seek reason and correctness as they live. They hate instability, unfairness, asymmetry, and irrationality.
"Being good and honest is the right answer," or "No, surviving by being cunning is the right answer." Even those kinds of statements ultimately come from the belief that there must be a correct answer somewhere, or from the hope that there is one.
And when the result doesn't turn out the way they expected, people regret having made the wrong choice. They say they should have chosen differently back then.
Life is huge, unknowable, and terrifying.
That's why humans try to define it, and why they want a universal key that can open a door that is both vast and impossible to understand. The discipline and faith born from that wish is what we call philosophy.
And my words were one kind of philosophy too.
That there were no right answers or wrong answers in this world to begin with.
Just as Ghoul wasn't the right answer, and human wasn't the right answer either.
"Well, I've gone on at length, but to sum it up, this is what I mean: nothing is the right answer. But nothing is the wrong answer either. It sounds contradictory, but even the words I'm saying right now are like that."
"..."
"Whichever path you choose, whichever thing you believe in, what's there is the road you walk yourself. Not a road I walk for you. What matters is whether you can take responsibility for what happens after the choice."
"Can I... really take responsibility?"
Grip...!
Eto's hand tightened on my shoulder, trembling.
"Can I take responsibility for what happens because of my choice?"
It seemed Eto still hadn't shaken off her fear of changing into something else.
To her, I said, "Are you an idiot? You're still a kid with milk on your lips, and you're trying to act like an adult?"
"Huh...?"
"Didn't I say it? Being an adult is shit. You have to take responsibility for your own actions yourself. But are you an adult? You only just graduated elementary school last year."
"..."
"Growing up is shit, the world is harsh, and there's a lot to be responsible for. More than a kid can handle. That's why parents exist—to help with that. Do what you really want to do. I'll help you."
Eto fell silent, unable to say anything. But the strength in the hand gripping my shoulder was slowly draining away.
"If you change, and I think it might lead you down the wrong path, I'll stop you with everything I've got. For example, say you get curious and try smoking. Then I'll borrow a Quinque from Hitokawa if I have to and give you a proper lecture. No, I'd really beat the hell out of you if I had to."
I thought I was laying down a pretty terrifying threat, but Eto let out a small laugh, as if she found something funny. Then she said in a tiny voice, "What if... what if something happens to me, and I really do become a bad Ghoul?"
"Let's see... I don't think you'd ever do that even if there were dirt under your fingernails. But if you went crazy and started killing innocent people..."
I put a hand to my chin and thought it over.
Yeah. If Eto really went wrong, and lost her reason like that Kakuja monster we met today, and started slaughtering people...
"I'd kill you. With my own hands."
"..."
Eto fell silent, and I continued, starting with, "And..."
"I'd die with you too. That's the responsibility I owe for failing to raise you properly."
"...Hehe!"
Eto laughed.
As if she'd been relieved to hear that. As if she'd thrown off the oppression that had been binding her.
Squeeze!!
Eto's arms wrapped around my neck and yanked me hard toward her. Thanks to that, I was about to get strangled to death.
"Kek! I can't breathe! Was that promise to kill you really that upsetting?!"
"No. It's the opposite. I was so relieved. Thank you, Dad."
There was no more tremor in Eto's voice. I was glad my words had helped.
No matter what choice Eto made from here on out, it wouldn't be the wrong answer.
Because there would be no wrong answer in life.
"..."
A dull ache...
But it still wouldn't be the right answer either.
Feeling the faint, almost imperceptible reaction from the scar on my right arm, I understood that much.