There was a being called a father.
But I had never once called him that.
One day, I asked him for the first time.
"Where is my mother?"
He turned to look at me.
We must have faced each other many times before, but for some reason, that moment felt like the first time I had ever truly met him.
"You have no need for such a thing."
He spoke with a cold detachment.
He looked as if...
"Kishou. You people..."
Those eyes were as if...
As if he were looking at a cow tied up in a slaughterhouse.
His dry lips moved.
His words were like a dagger.
"A failed product that should never have existed."
...What expression did I make then?
***
Thud.
Arima launched himself off the wall and landed lightly on the concrete floor where Eto had climbed up.
Just as Eto had abandoned the advantage of the water, he gave up the high ground to face her on equal footing.
The distance between them as they locked eyes was roughly five meters. Between them, sewage water roared like a torrent.
For some, it would have been a safe distance. But for these two, it was a narrow gap, ample enough for either to lunge forward and land a fatal blow in a heartbeat.
And yet, neither showed their killing intent first.
Eto recalled her Kagune, and Arima pointed the tip of his blade toward the ground.
It was less an act of reason than one of instinct.
As long as humans are social creatures, the urge to seek out one's own kind is a desire that sleeps deep within the subconscious.
They wanted confirmation.
They wanted to know if the other truly belonged to the same kind—not as a vague guess, but as an absolute proof.
Arima had already found his answer. He had seen Eto's eye, where the evidence of both human and Ghoul coexisted.
But Eto had no such certainty.
She had only inferred that he was of her kind based on Arima's behavior, his abnormal strength, and a sliver of intuition.
Did she find that unfair? Or was it simply a whim?
"That's right."
Arima admitted it readily.
"I am a hybrid of Ghoul and human."
"..."
Eto looked taken aback by the answer, which had been returned with almost absurd simplicity.
At some point, she had imagined it. She had wondered if other hybrids existed besides herself.
She had wondered if the miracle Koma had told her about—the love story between a human and a Ghoul—had occurred elsewhere.
Now, that miracle stood before her. That was why she was stunned.
He was so far removed from what she had imagined.
It wasn't just that he didn't reveal a Ghoul's eye like she did.
Everything about him was sterile.
An emptiness so profound he seemed as if he might vanish like mist at any moment. A dryness so severe it made her doubt whether he possessed emotions at all—that was the essence of Arima.
What they had built was different. The paths they had walked were simply too divergent.
Where had this man come from, and what road had he traveled to end up facing her here?
Her questions only piled higher.
But Arima, as if he had said all that was necessary, adjusted his grip on his weapon.
He kicked off the ground in an instant and charged, swinging his Quinque. Eto reacted just in time, unleashing her Kagune to deflect the incoming slash.
Clang!!
"I still haven't heard a proper explanation! You're really a hybrid like me? Then why don't you show your Kakugan? Why don't you use a Kagune?!"
To block the follow-up assault, Eto swept her second Kagune low, aiming to cut across beneath Arima's waist.
Arima hurled himself toward the side wall, and just before he kicked off it, he spoke.
"That's a strange thing to say."
Taht!!
Using the wall to spring forward, Arima swept his Quinque as if shaving off her Kagune, grazing past Eto.
He pivoted on his foot and shot back toward her; even as Eto blocked the strike, Arima's voice continued.
"Why would you assume every hybrid is like you? Have you never considered that you might be the anomaly?"
"What are you talking about?!"
"I said I am a hybrid of Ghoul and human, but I am different from you. No Kakugan, and no ability to use a Kagune. None of us have them."
"Us!? Who the hell are you talking about? Explain yourself properly!"
Clang!! Boom!!
The attacks collided. The floor split, and fragments sprayed from the wall.
Arima attacked with a ferocity that suggested he was finished talking, but Eto maintained a defensive stance, determined to hear more.
Perhaps displeased by her hesitation, Arima let out a small sigh and used the impact of their clash to propel himself upward.
Having created distance once again, Arima lowered his Quinque and spoke.
"In the past, a certain group took a great interest in human-ghoul hybrids and carried out experiments. They used humans as studs to produce Ghoul children. That was how countless hybrids were born. I am one of them."
"...!"
Eto's expression hardened at the revelation. It was a story that defied common sense.
Arima didn't seem to be lying.
She was horrified that such unethical experiments existed, and even more shocked by Arima's calm confession, as if he were recounting someone else's life.
"We are failures. We inherited Ghoul blood, but not the Ghoul traits. We possess power that surpasses ordinary humans, but the bodies meant to contain that power are hopelessly unstable. We were never meant to be born, nor were we meant to exist. We should have disappeared the moment we entered this world."
Arima opened the hand holding his Quinque.
As if proving the years he had spent swinging weapons, his palm was covered in scars, etched there like brands.
"But the man who became my father didn't erase us. He found a use for us. I don't know if he thought we were too valuable to throw away, or if he was simply venting his frustration on things that wouldn't obey him. Either way, thanks to that, I am still alive."
With that, Arima tore his gaze from his palm and looked at Eto.
"Satisfied now?"
"..."
She didn't know what to say.
She had thought she had met a kindred spirit, but in truth, he was completely different.
She felt an indescribable malice surrounding Arima. The man before her was a bastard born from that very malice.
"...Then why are you attacking me?"
"If there is a success and a failure, isn't it natural to want to know the difference between the two?"
Right. That was why Arima was standing off against Eto.
She could have asked if he really needed to go this far just for that. But Eto didn't ask.
Because that really was all there was to it.
The difference between Eto and himself. For that one answer, he had cut down countless Ghouls and chased her all the way here.
They had not even known each other for a full day, and they had not exchanged many words, but Eto was beginning to understand what kind of man Arima was.
"...Haah."
Eto let out a small sigh.
She still felt hostility toward him as a Ghoul Investigator. When Koma was brought down by him, she had felt a rage she could barely contain.
But now, a new emotion slipped into Eto's heart: a bitter sense of pity.
Aside from the fact that they were both born between two worlds, they shared nothing. In every other respect, his environment had been far worse than hers.
It was only natural to feel pity. And that pity made it harder to define Arima as a pure enemy.
At first, I was going to slash both his eyes with my Kagune and run...
Arima looked at Eto and Koma's faces.
If she left him alone, he would undoubtedly threaten them in some troublesome way.
Unlike with Kasuka, mutual assured destruction wasn't an option, and because of the anger over what happened to Koma, Eto had planned to take his sight—a method a bit extreme, even for her.
But if he's a hybrid like me... If that lets us understand each other's situation even a little... maybe we can solve this through talking...
That was as far as Eto's thoughts reached.
Flash.
A flash faster than any before it drove toward Eto's left eye.
Slash!!!
"Kuh...?!!"
The tip of Arima's long blade swept past.
Eto threw her head back desperately and barely avoided having her left eye pierced. But she hadn't escaped completely; the blade tore away her left eyelid.
Blood burst out, and Eto's left eye, once human, was stained bright red.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
Covering her left eye with her hand, Eto retreated and bared her teeth.
"First, an apology. I'm not very good with words."
Arima looked back at her, brushing flesh clinging to the tip of his blade away with a completely unrepentant expression.
"I didn't reveal my identity so we could empathize. I only did it because I was worried you might not fight at full strength due to the uncertainty of your opponent's identity. I had no intention of letting your killing intent weaken."
In other words, the moment Eto seemed inclined to step back from the fight, he forcibly dragged her back into the fray.
He wanted the battle to continue.
Feeling incredulous, Eto snapped, "You say that's not what you want? Then what do you want?!"
"...Change and awareness."
As Arima spoke, his eyes were so deep and calm that they felt emptier than dry.
"When I sensed the existence of a complete half-ghoul, I felt anticipation. It could have been admiration for a being more complete than myself. Jealousy would have been fine too. Anger, sorrow, inferiority, superiority—anything. I wanted any emotion, any impulse, to rise within me. I hoped for some kind of change."
As his words continued, Eto felt a prickling sensation across her skin.
What was this?
Arima looked so still. So composed.
And yet she felt, even now, that he was screaming without a sound.
"But I felt nothing. No excitement at all. It was like waiting for the next chapter of a book, only to find it was nothing special. All I could think was, 'Is that all?' Do you know why?"
With a flick, the bloodstained Quinque pointed at Eto.
"Because you're weaker than I expected."
"...What did you say?"
"If I'd wanted to, I could have cut your throat within thirty exchanges. Was that all a complete half-ghoul amounted to? Was this really the being they tried to reach by creating countless bastards? I came here believing you were a special existence. Don't disappoint me any further."
There was no bluff, no exaggeration in those words.
And there, Eto realized one thing.
"Are you still hiding your strength? Are you suppressing it with nothing but pity? What would it take for you to go all out? Should I tell you that you're not even worth my sympathy? Should I tell you about the time I brutally butchered a female Ghoul who tried to protect her little brother?"
Arima was far more twisted than Koma had imagined, and far more twisted than Eto had sensed up to now...
"Or should I drag the head of that human from just now in front of you and see if you'll go berserk trying to kill me?"
He was a far more warped existence.
Eto scratched at her forehead.
Her fingertips touched the furrowed crease between her brows.
"...My original plan was this. Since you saw our faces, I'd take away your sight so you couldn't track us."
"Not a bad judgment."
"Right? But I just revised that plan."
Eto lowered her hand.
The Ghoul's dark red eye, the human eye reddened by flowing blood.
Two blazing red gazes, shining like a true Ghoul's, burned fiercely toward Arima.
"I guess I'll have to tear out both your eyes and both your arms before you come to your senses, huh?"
"I'm looking forward to it."
The conversation was mismatched, yet the meaning passed clearly between them.
Eto's Kagune began to burn like fire, and Arima tightened his grip on his Quinque and took his stance.
Then, without either of them waiting, they hurled themselves at each other.
And the instant their blows crossed—
Kwaaaaaaang!!!!
As if waiting for that exact moment, the ground beneath them flipped over and the wall beside them exploded.
Into the space filled only with Eto and Arima's killing intent burst one Bikaku and one Ukaku wing.
Both struck at Arima's blind spot, crashing down on him.
"...!"
Arima, who had been focused only on Eto, reacted instantly and swung his Quinque.
But that reaction was half a beat too late—no, late by only a fraction of a second. And in that fraction, one of the blows pouring in from all directions grazed him.
Kwa-gagaaaaaang!!!
The three Kagune tangled together and roared.
With the recoil throwing her back, Eto recalled her Ukaku and looked to both sides in surprise.
"Enji! Kaya!"
The intruders were Enji and Kaya.
Since Arima hadn't pursued them, they had instead chased after him, waiting for the perfect moment to land a blow.
Kaya, standing beside Eto, turned to her and said, "Sorry we were late to help. He's the type who senses and dodges just about any attack like a ghost, so we had to wait for the decisive moment."
Then Enji rubbed his big nose with his thumb and glared at Arima.
"Ha! Finally got one in. Still nowhere near enough to pay back all the hell he put us through, though."
Drip.
What flowed down was fresh blood.
It was blood from Arima.
Arima had shown godlike skill, blocking or evading every attack that came at him from all sides, but the one attack from the upper right arrived too quickly for him to avoid.
Thanks to that, the right side of Arima's forehead was torn open.
The wound wasn't large, but the forehead was a place where even a small cut could cause heavy bleeding.
Bright blood ran down and got into his eye. Sensing the foreign irritation, Arima's right eye twitched.
"Half your field of vision is gone. That doesn't mean I'm going to go easy on you. You're too dangerous."
Hearing Kaya's words, Arima wiped the blood around his eye.
He tried to open it, but it seemed uncomfortable, so he closed it again soon after. Just as Kaya said, his field of vision had been cut in half.
On top of that, Eto now had two allies at her side.
Enji and Kaya.
They had nearly been taken down by Arima already, but they were still Ghouls strong enough to contend for dominance over a territory. Their presence was by no means negligible.
"Doesn't matter."
Facing these unfavorable conditions, Arima spoke in the same even tone as before.
"It's a suitable handicap."
"...Is he trying to provoke us?"
"Sounds like he means it sincerely, actually."
Enji let out a baffled sound, and Eto, having gotten a read on Arima, offered her own opinion.
Then Arima strode forward.
He aimed his one-eyed gaze, made red by blood, at them.