I saw a butterfly. Such a fragile life.
I grabbed it with my bare hands.
Without a second thought.
***
Danger.
Danger. Danger. Danger.
It had been fine to throw myself into the fight with some spirit and barely turn a hopeless situation into one that favored us. In the middle of that frantic exchange, I'd even started to get a rough read on the man called Arima Kishou.
But my brain kept firing warning signals that anything beyond this was dangerous.
Well, even I had to admit I'd pushed my body far too hard today.
I'd lost count of how many times I'd wiped the blood running down from my forehead.
Every time I wiped it away, my body tensed on its own, afraid Arima would use that split second to launch a surprise attack.
But perhaps because Eto was right beside me, eyes gleaming, Arima didn't rush in. Instead, he kept his distance and spoke.
"...There is one misunderstanding I would like to correct."
"?"
"It is not that I do not know how to fight humans. I am half human as well. I know exactly which parts, if damaged, are fatal."
...Half?
He was saying something interesting. But Eto didn't react at all, as if she already knew.
I had no idea what had been said between them while I wasn't paying attention, but I decided to leave that for later and focused on what he said next.
"There are only two reasons I am reluctant to deal with you. First, my orders are only to exterminate Ghouls. You are not a target."
"You proud of following orders without any flexibility?"
"And the second reason is..."
Ignoring my words, Arima's finger pointed at me.
"You have already gone beyond your limit."
"..."
I didn't bother replying.
I already knew that very well myself.
"The amount of blood loss. The fractures. The impact to the head. The fatigue from excessive muscle use. None of it is something a normal human can endure. Anyone else would have lost consciousness long ago."
He was hard to read, but even from his tone, I could tell he was thinking, What the hell kind of monster is this?
Not exactly the kind of thought I'd expect from some bastard who could slaughter hundreds of Ghouls by himself.
"When the human body is pushed to its limit, the brain releases narcotic neurotransmitters to dull pain and fatigue. In your case, those seem to be secreted excessively, as if it were natural. You must have spent your life in an environment where that was unavoidable."
He was basically saying, in a roundabout way, that I'd been running myself ragged like this my entire life.
And he was dead on.
Some people go their whole lives without ever seeing a Ghoul and think they're just urban legends. Me? For whatever cursed reason, Ghouls had gone from a nuisance to a full-time part of my daily life.
If I'd been hit this hard back when I was naive, I would've collapsed long ago from pain and exhaustion.
"So what? You gonna pay my insurance?"
"I have no need to be frantic because I cannot subdue you. The more you resist when attacked, the more troublesome it becomes. There is no need to waste effort catching an injured beast."
His calm gaze stayed on me, as if he didn't even feel the need to exert himself fighting me.
"In any case, in three minutes you will not be able to move a single finger."
He had seen through the maximum limit of how long I could keep moving while ignoring my body's warnings.
Arima was saying that no matter how much I disrupted things and threw the battlefield into chaos, I would soon collapse and he would take control of the fight.
Looking at him as if he were sentencing us to a fate without hope, I let out a short laugh.
The faint emotions in every word he spoke. The obvious, contradictory attempts at deception.
It was bluffing, plain and simple.
He was acting like nothing was wrong, like he was perfectly composed.
That behavior clashed so sharply with everything he'd done until now that the dissonance practically screamed at me, making it easy to notice.
Looks like my reckless, brute-force plan had unexpectedly hit something deep inside him. Watching this inhuman bastard finally show a human side was almost amusing.
"You've got a cute side to you, huh?"
I said what I honestly felt. Part of it was to loosen the tension in my body, too.
But the moment I said it, I felt the area around us fall into a sudden, heavy silence.
What? Why did the atmosphere freeze like that?
Why were both friend and enemy staring at me like I'd just said something insane?
Why was Eto looking at me with such a terrifying expression, and why was that bastard Arima taking a step back as if recoiling in disgust?
"Dad, what are you even saying in this situation..."
"I'm not into that sort of thing..."
Ah. I get it.
They'd just interpreted my words in some weird way. ...You little brats?
"What the hell are you thinking? I'm not into that either! I'm into pure, stacked women, okay!! Cough!"
Damn it.
My breathing was already ragged, and now the excitement made me choke.
My mouth was torn up, and every time I swallowed the blood pooling there, it came back up with the cough like I was spitting blood. It was miserable.
By my estimate, I'd just lost about forty seconds of usable time. If that had been his way of buying time, it had worked beautifully.
Fine. Then I'd answer with a delaying tactic of my own.
"Haa... If you hate being called cute, I'll change the wording. You're bad at bluffing, aren't you?"
"...What are you talking about?"
"Exactly what I said, kid. What, you weren't ordered to kill humans, so you won't kill me? Since I'll collapse on my own if you leave me alone, there's no need to fight? Do you really think that kind of excuse works? Eto's four-year-old excuse about wetting the futon because a pipe burst in the middle of the night sounds more believable."
"Why are you bringing that up now?!"
Eto, who had been minding her own business and then got dragged into it, protested with her face red all the way to her ears.
That's your punishment for trying to pin some weird taste on me earlier, you brat.
Ignoring Eto's resentful glare, I turned back to Arima.
"It's not because you weren't ordered to. It's not because I'm too weak to be worth fighting. The reason you won't come at me is simple."
With a crooked grin, I taunted him.
"You're just scared, aren't you?"
"...What nonsense is this?"
Arima's voice sounded as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
But what was in his eyes wasn't simple dismissal of my nonsense. It was a small confusion he himself hadn't yet recognized.
"I'm sure I'm the first one like me you've ever met. Normally, by now I'd be on the ground and unable to move, but I'm still crawling around like a zombie. Thanks to that, you can't land a proper attack either. You have no answer for how to deal with me anymore. Because if you mess up, you might actually kill me. So the more I push forward recklessly, the more you flinch and expose openings. It's like an elephant trying not to step on a mouse."
Of course, if not for the little owl distracting that elephant's attention, I really would've been crushed to death.
Meanwhile, Arima narrowed his eyes slightly and pushed back against my words.
"Why would I be anxious about whether you die?"
"Because you've never killed a human before, have you?"
It was a conclusion I'd reached from watching him all this time.
This guy clearly drew a line between Ghouls and humans. Because of that, he killed Ghouls without hesitation, but when it came to humans, he hesitated.
And since this was the first time a human had come at him as if begging to be killed, that confusion was showing on the surface.
"You could be the first."
"The first time is always the hardest. Crossing a line isn't something you can do as easily as you think. Especially if you're the type who's afraid of what you'll become after crossing it. I know that very well, because I've seen one idiot who had that exact worry and kept fretting over it alone without ever telling anyone."
Flinch.
Eto, who had been hit right in the sore spot, twitched her shoulders beside me.
We've got plenty to talk about, but later. After this is over.
Still watching Arima, I kept going.
"So you're scared. Scared of me coming at you even after I've gone beyond my limit. Scared of yourself killing me. Scared of that fact itself."
I took a step toward Arima.
"Ah, of course, in another situation you could kill me. If the 'someone' giving you orders says one word, you'll carry it out without hesitation, just like always. That's because that's the kind of bastard you are, right?"
The distance between Arima and me kept shrinking.
I advanced into his range.
Within a radius of three meters centered on him, every Ghoul that entered was slaughtered or neutralized in an instant, except for Eto, Enji, and Kaya.
"You want your own identity, but you dump your own agency on someone else and go looking for answers. What, your parents never taught you? Or do you just ignore whoever gives you orders? Even when you're fighting Eto head-on, you still don't know who you are? Then I'll teach you clearly."
That boundary between life and death.
I stepped boldly into his territory, the place that might turn into a true zone of death the moment my words landed.
"You're a complete idiot who can't do anything except kill."
Kaaang!!!
The shriek of tearing air exploded right in front of my face.
At some point, Arima had swung his Quinque, and Eto had reacted to the attack I couldn't and knocked it away.
That was all I could tell from the blast of compressed air.
But one thing was clear.
Before I'd fully entered Arima's range, he had lashed out in a hurry.
Looks like the delaying tactic worked.
He'd made a mistake unlike himself, and that mistake exposed the biggest opening he'd shown so far.
Let's end this. This damn fight.
I drew in a deep breath and held it.
I squeezed every last bit of remaining strength from the muscles in my body.
From here on, I could not stop. The Quinque that had been knocked aside by Eto's counterattack. Arima's wavering body. I threw myself into the huge opening laid bare there.
By feel, I had about thirty seconds left.
I'd settle this within thirty seconds!
***
He couldn't understand his own actions.
It was a mistake he would never normally make.
By the time he came to his senses, Arima had already launched a strike toward Koma.
Even though he knew the distance was insufficient, even though he knew Eto was positioned where she could respond, the attack had gone out for the first time not from reason, but from emotion.
It was only natural that the attack ended in failure.
Worse, his body had swayed violently and his balance had become unstable, exposing a massive opening.
If Eto had attacked at that moment, he might not have died, but avoiding a fatal wound would have been difficult.
And yet Eto still did not press in any further.
Instead, Takaki Koma rushed straight at Arima.
What was this? Was he planning to keep this idiotic strategy to the end? Was he going to leave the main assault to a man who was on the verge of passing out?
Did that mean Eto trusted Koma that much? Or was it a sneer, saying he could never go any further than this?
He was used to being insulted.
By his origins, by that burden, he had been insulted in every possible way over the years, and he had grown numb to it.
And yet, why was it?
Eto, whom he had wanted to face so badly, was avoiding a direct confrontation without hesitation, and Koma was charging in instead. Somehow, that struck Arima as an insult he could not tolerate.
Something unknown began boiling deep inside him.
From that point on, he no longer kept Eto in his field of vision.
He focused only on the man in front of him.
In a sense, he was staring down his true natural enemy.
No matter if Eto attacked from another angle, he would cut down only the enemy in front of him. He felt certain that if he didn't, he would never move forward.
The distance was right in front of him. Koma threw a punch.
It was a full-force strike, but to Arima's eyes it was still an obvious attack, visible from start to finish.
Because of that one obvious attack, the stepwork that had been moving like a flawless gear train twisted, and he ended up taking the hit.
He would not make that mistake again. No matter what happened, he would finish this.
The rebounded Quinque still carried the impact in his hand and arm. So he extended his other arm.
He forced away Koma's fist just before it reached his head and drove his own fist forward with everything he had.
Try to stop it if you can, Eto. Otherwise, this man dies.
But even as the fist drove into Koma's chest, Eto still did not intervene.
The sensation of Koma's ribs crunching and collapsing traveled back through Arima's fist.
Puhah!!
Koma's upper body was shoved backward, like a scarecrow knocked down by a gale.
Right here.
From this moment, the outcome was decided.
Even as he fell backward, Koma's eyes did not lose their light. He glared fiercely at Arima.
That split second of distraction was the decisive blow.
Grab.
As Koma toppled backward, he seized Arima's thrown fist. More precisely, his wrist.
And then.
KWA-GA-GA-GA-CRACK!!!
Eto dropped vertically like a bird of prey striking its target.
Her knee smashed Arima's outstretched arm, the one he could no longer pull back in time.
An arm bent in a direction it should never have bent.
Before the pain could even rise from it, he swung the Quinque like lightning. Even driven this far, his strike was still dangerous enough.
But Eto did not dodge it.
Puhk!!
The Quinque blade drove into Eto's side. But at such close range, there was no way the slash could carry full force.
By the time the Quinque had split about a quarter of Eto's side open, Eto had already managed to seize Arima's arm.
She sprang off the broken arm and twisted her body around.
Krrk!!
With Eto gripping Arima's wrist so hard the flesh was crushed, his arm twisted with hers. The joint came apart, and even his remaining arm was rendered useless.
But Arima's gaze was not on Eto.
He could not tear his eyes away from the fierce stare still locked on him.
"If you... don't want to kill me...!!"
His body was already on the verge of being knocked backward by the impact.
And yet Eto used the rebound from breaking Arima's arm to drive herself upright again. She closed in on Arima, and his forehead seemed to swell larger as it rushed toward him.
"Then... don't kill me―――!!!!"
Baaang!!!
Forehead slammed into forehead.
And the world around Arima shook.
Koma's shout echoed like a reverberation.
As if he had read the emotion in Arima's fist, the fist that had never managed to kill him in the end.
In Arima's eyes, as his head snapped back, the image of a butterfly that did not belong in this place was reflected.
The butterfly he had once grabbed as a child, but in the end had not killed, only let go...
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