"So you even know a place like this. A hospital that treats both humans and Ghouls."
Eto said this while gently brushing a petal on one of the flowers in the garden.
Several kinds of flowers grew there in a messy jumble, unarranged and chaotic, but surprisingly, the place was well maintained and not a single insect could be seen. It seemed to reflect the personality of the garden's owner.
"Our organization keeps track of anyone who could affect the balance. This hospital's owner is one of those people."
Arima said, slumped against the flowerbed.
His arms were still visibly damaged, with fractures, dislocations, and open wounds left untreated.
The old doctor here had intended to treat Arima after Koma, depending on the severity of the injuries, but the other Ghouls had objected.
They had gone through all that trouble to cripple those arms and strip him of his fighting power. Were they supposed to just stand by and watch him get treated?
The problem was that this old doctor, despite being unlicensed and operating without permission, had an ironclad sense of professional duty.
"There's an injured person right in front of me. How the hell am I supposed to just leave him alone!!"
Even after a swarm of Ghouls suddenly burst in, he had not flinched at all and kept doing his job. He was just like Koma.
Or maybe, as Arima had said, he was the kind of man who had nothing left to fear because he was living on borrowed time.
But that still did not mean they could force him with violence and threaten him into compliance. If anything happened to the doctor, who would treat Koma?
This conflict was resolved when Arima said he did not need treatment for himself.
Even the old doctor could not force treatment on someone who refused it, and Arima himself no longer seemed willing to keep fighting, so the Ghouls had nothing more to argue about.
Honestly, today was turning into a day of meeting every kind of human imaginable.
Koma had helped him, then threatened him while grabbing him by the hair. Arima had nearly massacred him. And now he was even getting talked back to by some old doctor.
The Ghouls could have easily been saying, "When did our dignity drop this low?" and "Let's just say the humans we met today are the weird ones."
"The organization? Come to think of it, you mentioned that before too. What is this organization?"
"..."
No answer came back.
Was he refusing to reveal information about the organization?
By now, she knew very well how inflexible this man was, so she also knew that pressing him further would just be a waste of energy.
Still, there was one thing she wanted to confirm.
"Do the people in your organization wear black coats and tilt their top hats low?"
"...Have you met them?"
That was enough.
As expected, the mysterious men Eto and Koma had encountered belonged to the same organization as Arima.
"Those people brought in a Kakuja Ghoul. Thanks to them, my dad and I got dragged into a completely unnecessary hell of a job. Right, what happened to that Kakuja Ghoul in the end? After we ran away, I mean."
"I killed him. Leaving him alive would have interfered with the pursuit."
"Wasn't he one of your own people?"
She had expected the Kakuja Ghoul to be neutralized, since there had been no pursuit.
But she had not expected Arima to have done it himself.
"His name was Kaigo. He was only something we picked up after finding him abandoned in an illegal Ghoul research facility. He could barely communicate, and once he went berserk, he couldn't be controlled. We were only keeping him around to use as disposable bait someday."
Use a Kakuja Ghoul as disposable bait?
The Kakuja she had faced, and partially experienced for herself, was an embodiment of madness and destruction.
It was difficult to control, but if it could be controlled, it would be an overwhelming weapon.
To use something like that as expendable bait, and eliminate it without hesitation when it became inconvenient—what exactly were these people in this organization?
For now, the only thing she could tell was that the organization probably had some kind of connection to the CCG.
If she recalled the conversation those men in top hats had had, this entire extermination operation had been bait meant to lure out a Ghoul named Kuzen.
Not knowing something was a threat in itself.
She needed information about this organization. Only then could she recognize danger in advance and avoid it.
The problem was how to get this bastard to open his mouth.
Even if she broke both his legs or slit open his stomach and showed him his own innards, he would not say a word.
Was there no way...
Footsteps.
Then came a sound that chased away the uncomfortable silence hanging between Eto and Arima.
To Eto, it was a set of footsteps she knew all too well.
Maybe because he was tired, his stride was shorter than usual. But as if deliberately insisting he was fine, he kept his steps light.
When she looked toward the hospital entrance, sure enough, Koma was approaching.
He waved and called out to Eto.
"What are you doing?"
"I was deciding whether to rip out this man's guts or break his legs."
"...What the hell were you actually doing?"
Koma said it in disbelief.
Eto glanced at Arima, then answered again.
"You remember those suspicious people who appeared in the basement of that sealed research facility with the Kakuja Ghoul, right? This guy seems to belong to the same group."
"Those assholes?"
Even Koma did not seem to have fond memories of them, because he frowned.
Then he looked at Arima, who was still leaning back against the flowerbed.
Arima's gaze was directed somewhere other than Koma. He looked blank, or maybe he was deliberately avoiding eye contact.
Koma watched him for a moment, then walked over to them as well.
He sat down with his back against the flowerbed too, placing Eto between himself and Arima.
That alone seemed to make his body ache in several places, and he let out a small groan. Then silence settled in.
"...Are you feeling any better?"
Arima was the first to break the silence.
Koma answered without hesitation.
"Yeah. Someone showed me mercy with their hand, so it ended at this level."
His tone sounded like he was teasing Arima for never being able to bring himself to kill Koma in the end.
But when he saw Arima nod calmly, he clicked his tongue. He had really thought Arima had gone easy on him, and in fact, he had.
"Ah, I heard from Enji and Kaya in the next room. You said you wanted to talk to me? What do you want to say?"
For that, he had even brought the enemy Ghouls here. Was it something important?
Arima fell silent for a moment as if thinking, then finally spoke.
"Why did you spare me?"
"Huh?"
Both Koma and Eto looked bewildered, as if asking what the hell he was talking about all of a sudden.
Arima had only been beaten one-sidedly, then barely managed to land a counterattack before collapsing. What was there to spare?
"You didn't actively guide it, but you had no intention of killing me, not even a little. Because of that, the other Ghouls also respected your will and did not kill me. This situation came about because of you. And even now, after opening my eyes, I still cannot sense any killing intent from you."
Arima turned his head.
For the first time since Koma had appeared, he met his eyes.
"I'll ask again. Why did you spare me? This is your only chance to kill me. If you miss it, it will never come back. You are not on my side, and you are someone who poses the risk of annihilating everything around me. Why keep someone like that alive?"
Arima genuinely wanted to know the reason.
Right now, he looked like a child facing an impossible problem and finally asking an adult for help.
Koma stared at him for a moment with a look of disbelief, then turned to Eto.
"Eto."
"Yes."
"Hit this idiot once."
Whoosh!
The moment he finished speaking, Eto threw a punch.
But Arima twisted his head and narrowly dodged the fist that exploded past his face at close range. Even injured, his reflexes were still monstrous.
As the fist cut through the air with a sharp rush and struck nothing, Eto's eyebrow twitched. But she did not follow up and simply pulled her fist back.
It was so natural it was as if she had known from the start that he would dodge.
Seeing that, Koma asked Arima, "Why did you dodge?"
"Because she was trying to hit me, I dodged."
"No. You dodged because you didn't want to get hit."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
"Not even close. Is dodging because you'd take that much damage if you got hit by that fist the same as dodging because you just don't like pain?"
Koma then pointed at Eto and continued.
"She put a little feeling into it, sure, but what Eto threw was a punch that wouldn't kill you even if it landed. There was no merit in dodging just to show us, people who might become enemies again, that you were still in good shape. The reason you dodged was purely your own refusal to feel pain."
"And what of it?"
"Same for me. I decided to spare you according to my own feelings."
So, in summary, Koma's answer was this:
He just did not want to kill him.
That was all.
He had moved purely according to his own mood, with no calculation of profit or loss. At last, Eto understood what she had meant before when she called Koma a "free-spirited person."
Arima did not seem satisfied with the answer, because his eyes narrowed.
"Foolish. To spare me for such a trivial reason."
"Says the guy who didn't kill me. That's comedy gold."
"In another situation, I would have killed you. Do you really think you can survive in this world with such a weak heart?"
"A weak heart, huh..."
Koma, who had been resting the back of his head on interlaced fingers, muttered to himself before looking at Arima.
The eyes that had seemed so easygoing were now sharper than ever.
"Is it strong to try to kill someone while shaking in your boots because you're afraid, 'If I leave him alive, I might die!'?"
"..."
Arima fell silent.
It was a perspective he had never once considered, and it had come straight out of Koma's mouth.
"That's all I ever hear, no matter where I go. Cheap sympathy, this is just how reality is over here, and all that... Now I'm even getting told I've gone soft for a kid."
Koma ground his teeth in irritation and went on.
"Do I look like some kind of heretic to you? Why are humans human in the first place? Because they evolved from apes that understood each other, empathized, and ultimately joined forces to fight stronger enemies, right? So is it really right in this world to kill everyone who isn't on your side like a psychopath and be the only one left standing?"
Flinch.
Who was it that trembled at that moment?
Was it Arima, who had only ever killed on command and by necessity? Was it Eto, who had, for one brief instant, truly intended to kill the female Investigator she had met underground?
Or perhaps it was Enji and Kaya, who had been hiding and eavesdropping all this time, reacting to his words.
Koma's lecture, aimed at no one and everyone, continued.
"Cut the crap, you idiot. If everything could be solved by killing enemies indiscriminately, who the hell would suffer? Even if you survive alone, what's waiting for you is only the kind of enemy you might one day run into and realize you can't handle by yourself."
Rather than reducing enemies, he increased allies.
That was what Hitokawa had done, and what Enji and Kaya's group, whom they had just met, did as well. That was his way.
The process was brutally difficult, but he had kept doing it anyway.
Arima was certainly a monster, absurdly strong.
But strength alone could not solve everything.
He was still young, so he did not know it yet, but eventually a limit would come.
As long as one was a living creature, it would.
"Of course, it's not like I've never killed anyone. There were cases where we couldn't even communicate, they were trying to kill us unilaterally, and there was even a grudge involved. Compared to that, you can talk right now. You've stopped trying to kill us unilaterally, and somehow, miraculously, nobody died. So why the hell would I be so desperate to kill you here?"
There were many possibilities: persuasion, threats, and more.
This was not like the usual enemy situation where it was simply one of us dies or the other does.
With a snap, Koma's finger extended toward Arima's face.
Then he directly refuted what Arima had just said.
"You ask if I think I can survive in this world? Not killing people is how I survive in this godforsaken world."
"............"
Arima's face still showed no expression.
No, it looked like he did not even know what expression he was supposed to make.
His facial muscles twitched as confusion, or perhaps shock, surged inside him, but he did not know how to show it.
He turned his head and looked at Eto.
His eyes asked, "Is he always like this?" Eto answered with a shrug that said, "Pretty much."
"Well, that's my answer. So what are you going to do now?"
The implication was whether he would finish this with that broken body of his.
After glancing down at his own body for a moment, Arima said, "Please send me back."
"And why should I trust you? From what I hear, you're in league with those rude top-hat bastards, right? If I send you back, a whole pack of weirdos could come swarming in."
"What do you want? What would I have to accomplish for you to let me go?"
"A peaceful day."
Arima tilted his head, as if asking what the hell that had to do with anything.
But Koma's expression was serious.
What he was talking about was the wish he had once told the Ghouls on Enji and Kaya's side.
"I'm not asking for anything big. I just want a day where I can sit in front of the TV at home with my family, free of burdens and worries, and laugh at stupid jokes without a care in the world. I went through this hell today for that."
"...I see."
It was a strangely floating answer, but Arima knew Koma was speaking in earnest, not joking around at all.
"I will protect the peaceful day you want."
"..."
For a moment, their eyes met. What did they read in each other's pupils?
Koma's mouth opened, and a light tone slipped out.
"Go on."
At those words, Arima rose to his feet. Then, with his back turned to Eto and Koma, he strode away.
Eto did not stop him from leaving. Instead, she watched his back and asked Koma, "Can we trust him?"
"Well, if my judgment was wrong, then I guess we're starting life on the run. But I think it'll be fine."
Koma also watched Arima's receding figure. The darkness was lifting in the direction he walked.
Looking at the boy walking beneath a sky turning purple, Koma said, "That kid is like you."
Snrk.
Eto let out a laugh without thinking.
She was glad Koma had been thinking the same thing she was.
**
"Is it really okay to just let him go like that?"
"At first I was planning to secretly follow them and kill them no matter what...."
The hospital rooftop was old and cracked.
Enji and Kaya were there, their bodies wrapped in bandages because their injuries had been worse than expected and even their regeneration could not fully fix them.
They looked down at Arima as he left the hospital.
A Ghoul Investigator terrifyingly strong despite his age. They could not leave a man like that alone.
If they missed this chance, they would never get another opportunity to kill him.
...That was what they had thought.
"Damn it. I shouldn't have eavesdropped on that conversation. Now I'm suddenly starting to doubt the way we've always done things."
Koma's words, spoken to Arima.
They were enough to shake even the hearts of the two Ghouls who had been listening from far away.
"Not killing people is his survival method... Easy to say, but you don't just let an enemy carrying a nuclear bomb walk away, do you? Is that old man's mind made of special alloy or something?"
Honestly, at this point, those two father and daughter were scarier than Arima.
Enji and Kaya stared at Arima's shadow, now so far away it was almost gone, and spoke.
"Our [En] alone isn't enough. We can't handle not just that guy, but the organization he belongs to either."
"Our Black Doberman can't either. But if our numbers grow, we should be able to protect those two at least."
"...If you drag us down, I'll kill you."
"That's my line."
They made a silent promise.
To protect those two father and daughter from some enormous thing writhing in an unknown place.
One organization alone was not enough. As Koma had said, when facing a powerful enemy, they needed to pool their strength.
That was why the two organizations, once bitter enemies, had joined hands.
Dawn was breaking in the eastern sky where Arima had disappeared.
At last, the long, long night was over.