Let's compare the current situation to fishing.
I was the angler, and the boy called Arima was the fish. The problem was that he was the kind of fish that looked like he could chew up a great white shark on his own.
I had succeeded in hooking him with a lie. I thought he had taken the bait.
But the truth was the exact opposite.
He had bitten on purpose.
Not for the tiny bait on the hook, but to get his hands on the big bait bucket the angler was carrying.
"That bastard knew everything and still took my bait. He was checking my movements so he could drag Eto out from behind me!"
Before I knew it, the positions of angler and fish had been reversed.
He had waited for the ambush after making me think things were going my way. He did it all with that calm expression, not a shred of tension on his face.
But since he got no reaction no matter how long he waited, it seemed he decided to probe directly.
Arima tilted his head and looked at me, remaining silent as he drew his own conclusions.
"The Ghoul you were with either abandoned you and ran away... or you're buying time so the Ghoul can escape."
And one of those conclusions was close to the truth.
The fact that he only saw two possibilities suggested he still wasn't certain whether Eto and I were on the same side, or whether I was just an ordinary human being threatened and used.
So, what now?
Lying any further didn't seem useful. If anything, it might just hand him more material to judge me by.
And if I just said screw it and refused to cooperate... this was the same guy who had been cutting down Ghouls without a flicker of emotion. The thought of him really tearing me apart was honestly terrifying.
After careful consideration, there was only one option left to me.
Tap!
Run like hell with my mouth shut! Sometimes the best response to danger is not to fight it head-on, but to flee.
I left Arima behind and bolted as fast as I could.
The only silver lining was that Arima just stared at me running away and didn't give chase.
Was he hesitating over whether to pursue me or Eto? That worked in my favor. The longer he stalled, the more chances we had to—
Whoosh!
A sharp gust of wind brushed past my ear.
At the same time, one of the walls directly in front of me cracked with a dry snap, and a Quinque buried itself in the concrete, hilt and all.
Crash!
"..."
Seeing the Quinque embedded in the wall after grazing my neck, I froze. I reached up to check my throat, terrified that it had been slit.
Thankfully, I wasn't cut.
Instead, I could feel the prickling goosebumps under my palm, my skin rough with terror.
"You shouldn't go that way."
Arima strode up to me while my legs were still frozen in place.
He passed by my side and yanked the Quinque out of the wall in one fluid motion. As crumbled concrete fell away, my eyes widened at the hole it left behind.
"...A Ghoul?"
There had been a Ghoul inside the wall. It was already dead, with nothing left but the mark of the Quinque buried in its forehead.
A hidden space inside the wall? I knew the city's sewers were as complicated as a maze, but I hadn't expected something like this.
Judging by the Ghoul's body pressed flat against the interior of the wall, it had probably been waiting for anyone who came close—namely, me.
The Quinque that had brushed past me had been aimed at this Ghoul.
"...You saved me?"
I looked at him with a mix of surprise and suspicion.
From everything he'd done so far, he didn't seem like the kind of guy who would spare someone suspicious out of kindness.
Arima dragged the Ghoul's corpse out from the wall and said, "During a Ghoul Investigator's mission, the principle is to minimize civilian casualties as much as possible."
"Even if the civilian is helping Ghouls?"
"Are you admitting it? That you were the one who gathered the Ghouls in that chamber and helped them escape?"
"..."
When I said nothing, Arima dropped the Ghoul's body onto the floor and continued, "In that case, we have to protect you as a criminal for the time being. The rest can be handled by people who know the law."
In other words, even if I was a criminal who had helped Ghouls, as long as I was human, he wouldn't kill me. He'd secure me first and let the legal system deal with the rest.
Which also meant he had no intention of letting me run.
"..."
I fell silent and thought for a moment. I needed to calmly assess the boy in front of me, whose thoughts were impossible to read.
What was his goal?
It was too suspicious to call this simple Ghoul extermination. He had been following the traces left by Eto and me.
"The larger group with Enji and Kaya came this way instead of taking the side passage?"
That made no sense.
Would they really abandon dozens of others just to catch two Ghouls who had taken a side route—one of whom was a human? That would be sacrificing the many to save the few.
Also, even after realizing I was the one who had been in the chamber, he had deliberately played along with my lie.
Why? To make me let my guard down and provoke an ambush.
Once I pieced that together, I understood Arima's objective.
"This bastard is after Eto."
The reason Arima had come down the side passage was because he had followed the traces of Eto's [Kagune], which she had used while protecting me. He had taken my bait specifically to draw out Eto.
And now that all my lies had been exposed, the first thing he asked about was Eto's whereabouts, not the group led by Enji or Kaya.
All the circumstances pointed to Eto being Arima's target.
Then another question arose.
"Why the hell is he after her?"
When had he even seen Eto, to be tailing her like some kind of stalker?
The only point of contact between them was when Eto, just barely regaining consciousness during the escape from the chamber, had deflected one of his attacks. Surely he wasn't holding a grudge over that.
There was no other reason for Arima to go after Eto—
"Arima, huh... If it's him, that's more than enough. Tch. If only Kuzen had shown up, I wouldn't have had to use a knife meant for a bull on a chicken."
What flashed through my mind was the memory of that unpleasant voice chewing gum.
Those guys from before... they had definitely mentioned Arima's name.
Unless there was another person with the same name, the boy in front of me had to be the Arima they were talking about.
Back then, I'd been imagining some hulking monster like a Kakuja, so even after hearing the name Arima Kishou, I hadn't been able to connect the dots right away.
From the way they talked, it sounded like this whole setup wasn't about wiping out Ghouls at all, but about catching Mister Kuzen. And the one prepared for that job was this monstrously strong boy.
"Could it be he knows Eto is Mister Kuzen's daughter?"
That suspicion crossed my mind, but I immediately rejected it.
The only people who know Eto is Kuzen's daughter are me and the old man.
Eto... I had told her once before when my head was full of blood, but I didn't know whether she still remembered it.
Either way, I had kept that secret tightly sealed.
I hadn't even told Enji and Kaya, who seemed to be on Kuzen's side, so how could he possibly connect Eto to Kuzen from a single glance?
...No.
Wait. There was a connection. Maybe not enough to prove it, but enough to make him suspicious.
"...Damn it!! It's me!!"
It was me.
A suspicious outsider who wasn't part of [En] or the Black Doberman, yet was standing right in the middle of everything.
And at that location, the two biggest Ghouls were Enji and Kaya.
I had made all sorts of requests to them for the Ghouls' escape, but from someone else's perspective, it could easily look like I was ordering the two around.
Someone who looked like a third party but could still give orders to those two. It would be natural to suspect a connection to Kuzen. They probably thought I was some sort of messenger sent to assist them.
And that suspicion had spread to Eto, who had been with me.
I didn't know whether my identity as a human had cleared up the suspicion, but for now, it seemed he considered Eto, the Ghoul, to be the more likely link.
That was why Arima was looking for Eto.
"I can't let this bastard meet Eto."
The moment he found a connection to Kuzen, something bad would definitely happen. Even if he didn't, there was no way he'd leave a Ghoul child alone.
Whether this was a relationship between fish and angler, or the reverse between angler and bait, I couldn't let this standoff, held together by a single fishing line, be broken.
I needed to slow him down somehow, even if only a little.
"Let me ask you one thing too."
"What is it?"
"Am I a criminal right now?"
"There's a difference depending on whether you were acting under threat or of your own will, but for now, you'd have to be considered caught in the act."
Helping a Ghoul that eats people is no different from aiding and abetting murder.
Whether that Ghoul killed someone directly or survived on a life someone else had discarded, the law doesn't distinguish between them.
And since I'd helped a whole bunch of those Ghouls escape and ruined the extermination, even if they went easy on me, I was still definitely looking at prison food.
"...I do have the right to a lawyer, right?"
At that, Arima nodded.
"You do."
"And the right to remain silent?"
"You do."
"Then I'm invoking my right to remain silent until I can safely get out of here."
I crossed two fingers in front of my mouth to make it clear I wasn't saying another word.
I couldn't give him any information about Eto.
That trick wouldn't have worked on another investigator. They'd just clench a fist and threaten to ask where I'd hidden the other Ghouls.
But with this boy, it was different.
He was monstrously strong, but in strange ways he seemed rigid, and I couldn't tell whether he was clever or just awkward. ...Fifty-fifty, really.
"Then until we get out of here, I'll be in charge of your safety."
Arima brushed it off as if it were no problem. If someone had heard him without knowing the context, they'd think he was completely indifferent to the whole situation.
Maybe he thought forcing my mouth open to learn about Eto and searching for her himself were basically the same thing.
"Now that that's settled, let's move. Even if I don't know, this place is pretty dangerous for you."
As he said that, Arima turned his gaze to the dead Ghoul, and I lowered my own eyes to inspect it too.
"...Huh?"
Looking at the dead Ghoul with its eyes still open, I felt something was off.
The dark red [Kakugan], unlike other Ghouls, wasn't sharp at all. It looked dull, almost drugged.
Come to think of it, the Ghouls from earlier had been like this too. Were they the kind that ate their own kind?
I didn't know much about the Ghoul world, but did crazy bastards who ate their own kind really show up this often?
While I was thinking that, I heard Arima mutter, "...So Ward 24 has opened."
"What?"
"Nothing."
With that, Arima turned on his heel and started walking away. He was just leaving the person he was supposed to be protecting right there. Was he expecting me to follow on my own?
He really was the kind of guy you couldn't tell was competent or clueless.
I could have tried to run again while I had the chance, but the moment I imagined him breaking my legs and dragging me along, I gave up.
I needed to contact Hitokawa somehow. At this rate, I was really going to end up eating prison food...
"Kieeeek!!!"
Crunch!
A Quinque shaped like a police baton drove into the waist of the Ghoul charging in with wild eyes, snapping its spine.
Even so, the Ghoul didn't stop and thrust out its [Kagune]. It was trying to crush the skull of the investigator in front of it and gorge itself on the brain inside.
Sshhk!
Just before the [Kagune] could land, another Quinque came in from the side and severed the Ghoul's neck along with its arm. Only after the severed arm and head spun through the air did the Ghoul finally stop moving.
Its body, now without a master, collapsed over the investigator beneath it. The stern-faced investigator shoved the corpse off himself with visible irritation.
The female investigator who had just saved his life by swinging her Quinque watched that and let out a quiet laugh.
"You okay? You really are better at commanding than direct combat, Marude-san."
"Shut up! Everyone's been called off to the extermination unit next door, so we don't have enough people to deploy! Someone has to pick up a weapon, and that someone might as well be me."
Ignoring the woman's hand as she offered to help him up, the investigator called Marude got to his feet on his own. Then he muttered under his breath, clearly dissatisfied with something.
"Damn it. If we'd caught Maen back then, I wouldn't be suffering like this... ...What are you doing?"
Right beside Marude, another male investigator was closely examining the severed Ghoul head.
The man, tall and thin, inspected the head from every angle.
He opened its mouth to check the teeth, lifted the eyelids, and brought his face close as if studying each tiny blood vessel one by one.
Then, as if reaching a conclusion, he tossed the Ghoul's head away like trash and stood up.
"Hmm... Looks like this Ghoul has also been practicing cannibalism."
"Another cannibal Ghoul? How many of these are there? This is the fifth one we've run into since entering the sewer!"
Marude didn't bother hiding his disgust at the man's conclusion.
However strong cannibalism made a Ghoul, it wasn't exactly common to run into Ghouls who had lost their minds enough to eat their own kind.
The female investigator brushed the hair stuck to her cheek back and looked toward the end of the sewer.
There was only dark, unpleasant air, like a path leading into a monster's stomach. Staring into that darkness, she murmured, "Could Ward 24 really be open..."