by Shin Towada
“Oh, I should give you something to say thank you,” he said, getting out his wallet.
“Keep your money,” the musician said. But Hide still felt he had to give him something. He was panicking, wondering what he could give the guy, when he remembered the canned coffee in his coat pocket.
“Sorry, man, this is all I’ve got,” he said.
The can was pretty lukewarm. But the musician’s eyes lit up.
“Wow, no way! I know I said keep your money, but I haven’t eaten too well these past few days. This helps a lot!” Taking the can, he smiled and said, “God’s work.”
“Like I said, man, it’s all I had,” Hide said, smiling back. He bowed his head deeply in thanks before rushing off.
“Uh, where can I get them …”
After he left the musician, Hide went into a discount store. In his mind were the memories of setting off fireworks with Kaneki. Hide bought some rockets and a lighter, then headed for a convenience store.
“Hey, Nagachika!”
By some chance, Kiyama was there by the periodicals rack, flipping through a magazine.
“Oh, hey. Killing time?”
“You know me, always gotta be doing something! You?”
“Well, you know.”
Hide went on by. First he grabbed a rice ball, then headed to another section.
“Huh? What are you getting that for?” Kiyama asked, his head tilted to one side. Seeing Hide at the register, Kiyama had stopped reading and come over. Hide took the product in his hand as if he were going to crush it.
“Because I wanted it,” he said.
By the time they got to the meeting point in front of Anteiku, Cain and Sankou were already there. Cain saw them coming and gave them a small wave, then squinted to try and see inside the café.
“Kaneki’s not done working yet. Let’s have a look around this area for the time being. We might lose sight of him if we’re not familiar with the lay of the land,” he said.
Most of the streets around Anteiku were deserted. Once night fell they would be all the more eerie, like a haunted house.
Everyone followed behind Cain as he started down the darkening streets.
“Cain? I keep feeling like something’s gonna jump out.”
Kiyama kept looking around; he was all keyed up and unable to calm himself. Sankou’s gaze, too, was restless.
“I know what you mean. I can walk around abandoned buildings or whatever with no problem, but something’s got me nervous today,” Cain said. Maybe we shouldn’t go too far.
As Cain spoke, there was a rustling. And the sound was getting louder.
“W-what is it?!”
Trembling with fear, Kiyama turned around—to see Hide taking the crinkly wrapping off his rice ball.
“Oh, sorry. Got hungry.”
“Not a care in the world, eh, Nagachika?”
Hide chomped into the rice ball.
“You’ve got nerves of steel!” Cain laughed.
“You know what they say: you can’t go into battle on an empty stomach. But maybe we shouldn’t wander too far. A real-life Ghoul might come out at us …”
“Hide, are you freaking out too?”
“Yes, I am! Even people who live in this area get lost around here.”
“Oh, right. Well, then, maybe we should head back.”
Having only just gotten there, Cain started back toward the café. Kiyama and Sankou’s relieved faces seemed to say, Finally.
But the group had gone down a rather deep alley. And sure enough, they had gotten lost.
“Another dead end, Cain.”
Stuck in a narrow blind alley, everyone stopped and looked up at the sky.
“Oh no, lost again … Sorry, everyone, just a second while I figure out where we need to go,” Cain said, tapping at his smartphone.
It was dark there, far from the streetlamps. There were no lights on any of the buildings surrounding them, nor were there signs of other people nearby.
Kiyama pushed his glasses up, mumbling to himself, “Really does feel like a Ghoul might jump out.”
Perhaps his words triggered what happened next.
Suddenly the hairs on Hide’s arms were standing on end; he had an oppressive feeling, like he was being suffocated. What’s happening? But before he’d even had that thought, events were already in motion.
“You’re right, this is a great hunting ground!”
The voice echoed in the tiny dead end. Hide looked around to find Kiyama no longer beside him.
He screamed.
Kiyama had not disappeared. He had been thrown back against the wall behind them, slammed against it by the momentum. When Hide looked back, Kiyama had fallen onto the concrete, as if he’d slid down.
“Kiyama!”
Sankou ran up to Kiyama’s body and started shaking him. From the corner of his eye, Hide saw it.
The blood-red eyes.
They weren’t dealing with a human being anymore.
“Had to get all the puzzle pieces in place first, but now … my dinner is ready!” And there, with a smile of ecstasy on his face and something taillike waving around him, was Cain.
“Hide, I’m one too, I always have been. I’m a Ghoul too! Look, see, it’s burned into my eyes! The world you will see at the end!”
With a sound like the wind whipping past, Cain’s tail, which had been quivering behind him, grew swiftly. It lightly caressed Hide’s cheek before slamming itself into the wall. The wall could not withstand the force: shards flew and dust rained from the hole left behind.
“Pretty scary stuff, huh?! Shake, cry, cower all you want, but look! Look at this!”
His tail, swaying just like a T. rex’s, hit the concrete. The sound of the impact went straight through Hide. At the sight, Sankou fell on top of Kiyama as if to protect him.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you yet. I want to enjoy the moment before I take the puzzle apart. What a waste it’d be if I didn’t take my time and savor you …”
The end of Cain’s tail rose up, aiming toward Hide.
“Hey, isn’t it funny, Hide?”
Hide turned on his heel and began to run at high speed, leaving Kiyama and Sankou behind.
“I don’t think so, Hide. You don’t seem like the type to run off and leave your friends!” Cain said, raising his voice as if Hide had disappointed him. He began to head toward Hide.
Hide looked back just for a second. He saw Cain and those gleaming red eyes steadily approaching.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit!”
After turning again to face forward, Hide took full advantage of his knowledge of the area and dashed off, frantically turning left, then right.
“Think you can run from me, Nagachika?”
But Hide’s opponent was a Ghoul. Cain stomped the ground and bounded off it, closing the distance between them in one leap. And then one of Cain’s tails—his bikaku kagune, a special Ghoul power—struck Hide.
He let out a wordless scream.
The impact was like he’d been beaten with a blunt object. Hide was slammed to the ground. He screamed in pain.
By the time Hide fought through the pain and opened his eyes, Cain was standing over him.
Before his expression had been playful, but now that was gone. His kagune swished through the air as he asked:
“How long did it take you to … realize I’m a Ghoul?”
“I didn’t, until just now,” Hide stammered immediately.
“I know that’s not true. Most humans freak out and nearly faint as soon as they see a Ghoul. Some start running, but I’ve never seen a college student like you run straight off. You must have been expecting this,” Cain said.
Well, there had been a few things.
For one, when Sankou had noted Kaneki�
��s job at Anteiku, how had Cain known it was a café?
Why had this man, who could handle going into abandoned buildings and places with strange psychic energy, performed absolutely no nighttime observations when that was the most active time for Ghouls?
Once Hide had started thinking about it, there was no end to the clues. And that small sense of unease had built up inside him. But Hide didn’t say any of this. Because at this stage in the game, the best-case scenario was that this was a nightmare.
“You’re giving me too much credit,” Hide said. “All I did was freak out and start running. Just believe me!”
“I’m running late now because of you. All I wanted was to play a little and then kill and eat you, but I’m not from the 20th Ward. If I’m seen invading a local Ghoul’s territory it’d be a bad scene,” Cain said. He clicked his tongue.
“If I took you back … No, you’re getting eaten here. It’s dinnertime!”
Hide turned his face away from Cain. He hesitated before speaking.
“Please be gentle with me.”
What an idiotic thing to say. I bet he never thought he’d hear someone beg like that, Hide thought. Cain snorted in laughter, and then licked his lips.
“What the hell, man. You were funny, you know that? Been nice knowing you,” he said, opening his mouth wider as he slowly approached Hide. Hide stuffed his hands into his coat pockets.
Soon I’ll be consumed and then it’s all over. Lots of people get eaten like this by Ghouls, I guess.
Cain’s breath hung in the air over Hide’s face. Then it happened.
Hide pulled his hand out of his jacket pocket and crammed what he’d been secretly gripping into Cain’s mouth.
“Wh—?”
As Cain started backing away from this sudden counterattack, he became aware of a foreign substance in his mouth and started vomiting.
“Blech! What have you—!”
Cain was tearing at his mouth with his fingers to remove the substance—the rice ball Hide had bought at the convenience store.
“Ghouls can’t eat human food … seems like that’s all I’ve heard lately!”
Hide rolled away, putting about five feet between them, before pulling the lighter and bottle rockets out of his bag.
“And look what’s next!”
Suddenly he lit one of the rockets.
“Dammit!”
The bottle rockets Hide aimed straight at Cain made a tremendous sound as they flew and exploded around him. Distracted by the bursts all around him, Cain froze for a moment.
Hide seized the opportunity and ran toward him.
He pulled his other hand out of his jacket pocket, and with it, the other item he’d bought at the convenience store. Hide broke the seal on it.
He pushed it into Cain’s mouth, squeezing the tube quickly to get all the contents out.
“Hits the spot, doesn’t it?”
Hide held one hand over Cain’s mouth, and with the other he pushed his chin back. Cain’s throat was heaving up and down.
He swallowed.
And then he began to retch. “What the hell is—! It’s glued to my throat … Can’t get it out … Can’t throw it up!”
Hide showed the empty packaging to Cain, who was thrashing around.
“Meat sauce! Minced meat, tomato, it’s all mixed together, like a paste …”
Unlike the rice ball, which was solid, Cain couldn’t easily spit out the sauce.
Cain screamed and grasped at his throat. His kagune, which had swollen to show off his power, had disappeared, and only his red eyes remained visible.
“I’ll kill you, you asshole … I’m gonna kill youuuuu!”
Overcome with anger, Cain glared at Hide, his hands balled up into fists.
But before he could attack Hide, he heard the voice of someone coming down the alley.
“Just what’s all this about!”
At the other end of the narrow alley were two men coming their way. Cain’s face lost its color at the sight. Each of the men carried an attaché case.
“Looks like this alley’s on the investigators’ patrol route,” said Hide.
Hide, along with Kiyama and Sankou, had followed the 20th Ward’s Ghoul investigators. Perhaps it had looked to Cain like they had been running around thoughtlessly, but actually they had been following the patrol route. And in order to draw attention to what was happening, Hide had set off the bottle rockets. It had been a high-stakes bet, but it had paid off.
As soon as the men saw Cain, their faces hardened and they began to shout.
“Red eyes … He’s got kakugan!”
“Confirmed Ghoul, exterminate!”
Cain began to quake with fear, unlike when he’d been facing off with Hide.
“No, please, don’t, don’t!”
As he pleaded, something shot through Cain’s body, fired from the attaché cases.
“Aaaahhhh!”
A disappointingly quick finale.
Cain’s screams in his death throes echoed, but he soon ceased to move.
The Ghoul investigators regarded Cain carefully as they considered when to approach him.
“He’s dead.”
“Pretty weak for a Ghoul, but who would’ve thought when we were temporarily dispatched to this area that we’d see a Ghoul right off the bat? Hey, Tojo, give the CCG branch office a call. Oh, right, the kid who got attacked. You okay there, kid?”
The investigators looked around.
But there was nobody else there.
“Spaghetti with meat sauce …”
As soon as the investigators had rushed to the scene, Hide had slipped away.
All he could think about was Kaneki.
When he’d taken Kaneki to Big Girl to celebrate his discharge from the hospital, he’d thrown up when he tried to eat hamburger steak, which had always been his favorite. Just like Cain had thrown up a little while ago.
But as if to disrupt his thoughts, he sensed a shadow falling in the darkness. Hide stopped and looked up at the sky.
He let out a wordless sound of surprise.
Fluttering down toward him was a human form.
He had no time to see what the shape was. Shock ran through his mind.
“Thanks.”
Hide faintly heard this voice full of gratitude. And that’s where his memory cut off.
“Nagachika? Nagachika?”
His consciousness was wrested from the darkness. Someone was speaking, trying to wake him. He tried to open his eyes, but his temples ached piercingly.
“Are you okay, Nagachika?”
He heard the voice again. Somehow he opened his eyes to see who was speaking.
“Oh, good! Do you remember me? I’m Kiyama!”
“Ki … yama?”
Still in a hazy state, Hide raised up and shook his head. He tried again to focus on who was talking to him. Behind Kiyama stood Sankou.
“Hey, wait … What happened?” Hide asked, not grasping the situation.
“We don’t exactly know either.”
“Huh?”
“The next thing we knew, we were here.”
Not knowing where “here” was, Hide let his eyes wander. He saw that he was sitting on a grassy lawn, not far from a building he recognized.
“We’re at the college?”
“Yeah. When we came to we were on campus.”
Hide pressed on his forehead, trying to bring back any memories. But he just couldn’t.
“And where is Cain? I just don’t understand.”
Hide jumped involuntarily at hearing that name. Kiyama didn’t seem to grasp that something had happened.
Hide glanced at Sankou, but she kept her head down, saying nothing. Was it possible that she didn’t want to tell Kiyama that Cain, who
he’d admired so much, was actually a Ghoul? Or perhaps she’d lost her memory due to shock?
“I’m not too sure either, man …”
Hide rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. He caught a whiff of meat sauce. He sat like that for a little while before eventually returning his hand to the grass and saying:
“Isn’t this occult as hell?!”
V
A few days after their mysterious return to campus, the trio compared notes.
Hide said that in his honest opinion it was probably all just a dream, like a crappy movie ending, but Kiyama kept going on about how it was a paranormal phenomenon.
“I guess anything’s possible if you live long enough …” Hide said, sounding serious. He and Kaneki were talking after the Asian History class they sat together in.
“What’s up with you all of a sudden?” Kaneki said, tilting his head.
“Never mind, man,” Hide said, then put his hand to his stomach. Almost lunchtime. He was hungry.
He still didn’t know what had happened, although he’d managed to convince himself it was a dream or something else. Hide was glad he was the kind of person who could do that. Maybe I should go to Big Girl for lunch. That place is totally the …
“Uh, the promised land …”
Definitely starts with a C.
Hide kept repeating, “Ca … Ca …” to himself in hopes of remembering the word. Kaneki just watched, with an expression that all but said, “Forgot it again, huh?”
“Ca … Ca … Ca …”
But the only word that came to mind had nothing to do with Big Girl.
“Cain …”
What he’d tried so hard to explain away as a dream was, after all, all too real. He’d seen a Ghoul—something that had felt so disconnected from his life—up close and personal.
But he was with Kaneki, who would probably just tell him off for being wrong again. And then he’d eagerly start explaining about “the promised land,” like always.
“What?”
But Kaneki just sat there next to him, speechless.
“Kaneki? You okay?”
“Hide, have you ever read the Bible?”
“What? Why?”
“Canaan is the Promised Land, and Cain is Abel’s brother. They’re both in the Bible.”
