by Shin Towada
But he had one concern—wouldn’t any good coffee shop be full of “his kind”?
“Oh, again?”
He’d finished work and was heading home on his bike when he caught the scent of his own kind. Every time he passed by this café called Anteiku he smelled Ghouls. Maybe this was their favorite hangout.
A shiver ran through Ikuma, and he started pedaling away as hard as he could.
“Don’t wanna get too close …”
II
His life in Tokyo was going pretty well, all things considered. He got along well with people at work, and he could get food regularly. But that was only because lots of people killed themselves.
One day he was on his bike, heading toward the hill again. As he got closer to his feeding ground, the smell of death was in the air.
“Another dead one, huh …”
He was glad to get something to eat, but it also made him feel down. At the top of the hill Ikuma got off his bike and went down the slope by foot.
There, he found a young woman’s body on the ground.
“Why do they want to die? Why did she …” he murmured, standing before the woman’s bloody corpse. If I’d met her just before she did this I would’ve tried to stop her. In truth, he had stopped people from killing themselves more times than he could count.
But he couldn’t let himself get too sentimental. He had a job to do, and it had to be done quickly. Ikuma reached out to touch her.
“So you’re the one who’s been causing all the mayhem around here lately.”
Suddenly, someone’s voice cut into the silence between Ikuma and the corpse. He turned around in surprise to see a man, his face cloaked by a hood. He looked to be in his late twenties to early thirties. He had a goatee and long hair that fell around his face.
He’s a Ghoul.
It was easy to see why Ikuma hadn’t noticed him lurking there. He was a far, far more experienced Ghoul.
Ikuma left the corpse where she was and dashed back up the slope. I gotta get away from here somehow. But right when he reached the top, a shadow entered his field of view.
He yelped in shock.
The man had already made it to the top of the hill, confronting him there like an ambusher. Immediately, the man’s fist met Ikuma’s face with a force that sent him tumbling back down the slope.
Reflexively he tumbled as he fell, but as his body hit the ground he felt dizzy. The man approached silently. His breathing didn’t even seem to have changed.
I can’t beat him. I know that already.
“I’m so sorry!”
Ikuma rolled over into a bow, his hands on the ground and his head lowered.
“I just moved to Tokyo and I don’t know how things work here! I didn’t know this was somebody’s turf! I’m sorry, I won’t come here again! Please overlook this, I’m begging you!”
The man was silent for a second. “You don’t know how things work? When did you move here?”
“About three months ago,” Ikuma stuttered.
“Three months? And in all that time, you had zero contact with other Ghouls?”
Ikuma warily raised his head and nodded.
“You’re the first I’ve met since I moved here. You might not understand, but I want to live in the human world—well, as much as I can. So I’ve been trying to avoid other Ghouls …”
His words were unexpected to the man, who looked like he was deep in thought. Like a criminal awaiting sentencing, Ikuma waited for his response.
He looked straight at Ikuma. “Oh,” he muttered. “You’re like Ken.”
“Ken?”
Who’s this Ken? The man didn’t answer Ikuma, but he took a piece of paper that looked like a flier out of his coat pocket and handed it to him. On the paper was the name of a café, Anteiku, and its address.
“This is …”
… the café that always reeks of Ghouls.
“The people here are in charge of dividing up the 20th Ward. It’s used as an information exchange for Ghouls too. It’d be useful for you if you dropped in once.” He paused. “I’ll let you off this time.” With that, the man left.
Ikuma looked at the flier and at the woman’s body, and for a while he couldn’t make himself leave the spot, but eventually he ran away, leaving the area without laying another hand on the corpse.
III
A few weeks went by after his encounter with the mysterious man before Ikuma got hungry. He took the spice jar that he’d put the bone meal in to save for hard times and nearly put it in his mouth as he shook it, but nothing came out. It was still a while until payday, so he couldn’t even buy himself coffee.
I’m not going to Anteiku no matter what. I don’t want anything to do with other Ghouls, it’s too scary. I’ll deal with this somehow.
But now that he knew the Ghouls here had their own territories, he couldn’t go looking for bodies in the same happy-go-lucky way he used to.
“I’m so screwed … Is everyone in Tokyo like that guy?”
Since he’d seen a glimpse of that man’s powers, Ikuma’s fear of Ghouls in Tokyo had only grown. His stomach growled. I could starve like this.
“Mama …”
If I ask mom she’ll send me some meat and money. Then I could keep going. Without really thinking about it Ikuma grabbed his smartphone. His hands were shaking as he fumbled with the screen.
But then he almost flung it across the room. Why did I come to Tokyo in the first place? To make it on my own. So why the hell would I press the emergency button and call mom now?
Sitting at home, all he could think about was his hunger. Ikuma put his guitar on his back and went out.
It was six in the evening. He sat down in front of the station, awash with people coming home from work, and started playing one of his own songs. It was a folky song, the kind of music his mother liked to listen to.
Ikuma had a reason for what he sang. I want to lose myself in the crowd, be like any other person, but I’m a monster. My life depends on eating people’s sadness. And I sometimes feel fate’s gotten the best of me. I’m being crushed by the contradictions … He put his feelings into his lyrics, and singing helped him keep a kind of emotional equilibrium.
Keep going, you can do it, don’t give up, you’ve still got life.
It was his hope that this song might give encouragement to someone. I want to think, want to believe that even a Ghoul like me can give support to humans. I want to be a cog in the machine of the world.
As he sang his voice started sounding better. His high spirits were overriding the feeling of hunger. Suddenly, he had an audience of one.
The boy watching him was about the same age, or perhaps a little younger, with short, ruffled brown hair. He sat down right in front of Ikuma and listened to his song.
Ikuma found it so much easier to sing to an audience. He started playing a song he had written since moving to Tokyo.
“God is there, yeah, don’t lose sight …” he sang.
It was something he thought when he looked at all the people who had cut their own lives short, and he wondered if maybe there was something that had made them cut all ties to everyone and everything. He wondered if the truth wasn’t that there was something really important, very near.
He knew it was absurd for him to be thinking that kind of thing, when he was the one who ate their flesh. But he couldn’t help it. When he closed his eyes and listened carefully, he felt a presence that he knew would save him—God.
“God?”
The boy, who had been silently listening, suddenly responded. The way he said it, it sounded like he wished God were there. Maybe he’s in the kind of situation that makes you seek God’s help.
Once he finished singing, Ikuma took his hands away from the strings and spoke to the boy.
“Is something troubling you?”
For a second he gave no response. Then he startled, suddenly aware, and rushed to applaud. But his gaze quickly fell.
After a moment of silence it all started to spill out.
“It’s just … my friend’s in trouble and I want to help him but I can’t in any big way.” Ikuma didn’t know what had happened, but it seemed like the boy was lamenting his own powerlessness. “If there is a God, I need their help,” he continued. His words sounded strangely sad.
Trouble with his friend …
Ikuma remembered his friends back home.
“But you know, it’s okay, isn’t it? You don’t have to do anything big to help.”
Ikuma had lots of friends. Human friends, and a few Ghoul friends too. But since moving to Tokyo, he still hadn’t met a single person that he could call a friend.
He couldn’t bear the thought of life without friends by his side to laugh and fight with over silly stuff. His life alone was a sad one, and sometimes he cried a little at night. Now he knew it was enough just to have a friend by your side.
“Sometimes it helps just to be someone’s friend. I think there’s nothing better than that,” he told the boy, choosing his words carefully.
As Ikuma wondered whether he had gotten too preachy, the boy nodded, as if he’d been chewing over the words.
“I’m feeling a little better already!” he said, with a smile like the sun breaking through clouds. When he smiled he looked younger.
I think this is the first time I’ve been of any use to someone since I moved here.
The boy offered him some money in gratitude, but Ikuma refused it. It had been like a ray of light cutting through the gloom of his life in Tokyo, and now Ikuma himself finally felt positive. That was reward enough for him.
But the boy couldn’t let it go at that. He rummaged in his backpack, looking for something to give Ikuma.
“Oh, I should give you something to say thank you.”
He fumbled for his jacket pocket as if he’d suddenly remembered something. And what he pulled out brought a smile to Ikuma’s face.
It was a can of coffee. And best of all, it was unsweetened with no milk.
I can’t get food, I’m out of money, and I’m starving, but there is no gift in the world more precious than this.
“This helps a lot. God’s work!”
Ikuma grinned as he held the can in both his hands reverently, as if he were praying.
“I’ll come back and listen again. And I’ll bring my friend next time!” the boy said, then left.
He sure is a lucky guy to have a friend who worries about him that much.
“Whoa.”
While he was talking to the boy, a crowd had gathered around without him noticing. Ikuma picked up his guitar and again began to sing.
He sang in front of the station for a few hours. Prompted by the boy’s presence, his audience had grown, and lots of people had listened to his songs. Some of them had been generous, and he managed to make nearly 6,000 yen. Now he could buy all the coffee he wanted to stifle his hunger.
He’d imagined Tokyo as a scary place, but now he knew there were some very kind people there, too. I’m gonna find a way to get my own food somehow and make it in Tokyo.
As he walked down a road with no one else on it, going away from the station, he opened the can of coffee the boy had given him. The aroma that drifted up toward him delighted his sense of smell. Just one whiff was enough to know how it tasted.
Ikuma slowly brought the can up to his mouth.
“Just my luck to run into a Ghoul in a place like this! I’ve been blessed, no exaggeration!”
The voice came out of nowhere.
Ikuma exclaimed in surprise.
Before he could even turn around, he was punched in the hand holding the can of coffee. Then, not knowing what had happened to him, Ikuma felt an intense pain shooting through his thigh and fell straight to the ground.
“Wh …”
A small puddle formed around the can of coffee where it fell, and his guitar also lay nearby. As the pain spread through him, he realized belatedly that someone had kicked him.
“Any self-respecting Ghoul shouldn’t drink that cheap canned coffee. You’ve gotta go for the artisan, pour-over stuff.”
Sensing danger to his body, Ikuma tried to get up and run away, but this time, a fist connected with his jaw.
He was sent flying, and landed on the ground again.
“W-why?”
That’s when, finally, Ikuma took a good look at his assailant. He had the looks of a movie star or a model. At first glance, he didn’t look like a violent kind of guy at all.
But his red eyes and the gleeful smile on his lips told Ikuma all he needed to know. This guy is extremely dangerous.
“Listen up! The thing is, tomorrow I’m having a long-awaited feast, after months and years of pushing myself to extremes! Can you hear how my heart is pounding? I hope you can!”
To Ikuma this was a meaningless string of words.
Maybe he didn’t want to be understood either. Maybe just taking out that passion on someone is enough for him.
His heel slammed into Ikuma’s solar plexus.
Ikuma screamed in pain.
A number of his ribs cracked with a dull crunching sound.
“I know you can feel it, this pathos overflowing from me! But humans are too fragile to share this feeling … Anyone but a Ghoul would break too easily!”
He was not like the man who had given Ikuma the flier for Anteiku. His punches were meant to kill.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself,” the man said, looking down at Ikuma. “My name is Shu Tsukiyama, although there’s no need for you to remember that!”
Ikuma’s body twisted as Tsukiyama kicked him. His right foot sped through the air, aimed directly at Ikuma’s heart.
“Uh-oh.”
There was the sound of a blunt impact, like something hitting metal. Whatever it was had impeded the movement of Tsukiyama’s heel.
Blood was pouring from Ikuma’s mouth all over his face, but near his left arm a thick Kokaku kagune, shaped like a turtle’s shell, had emerged. Reminiscent of a knight’s shield, it somehow repelled Tsukiyama’s blows.
“Oh, you’re a Kokaku, too, huh?” Tsukiyama said with a jeering smile after a long appraisal of Ikuma’s kagune. “Then take a look at my kagune!”
Something ominous rose up from Tsukiyama’s back before swirling and twisting itself around Tsukiyama’s arms.
“How do you like that!”
His kagune was shaped like a drill, and Ikuma could see just by looking how heavy it was. How much upkeep does it take just to have a kagune like that?
The cruel reality had been shoved in his face. They both had a Kokaku, and the one to win would be, quite simply, the one who was strongest.
“Take this!”
Tsukiyama’s kagune came at Ikuma, aimed directly at his face. Ikuma jumped backward to get some distance, but Tsukiyama’s kagune was more flexible than its thickness suggested, and it also seemed to extend like a spring.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Instantly, he tried to protect himself with his own Kagune, but his could not withstand the weight of the blow, and it pierced his shoulder. The feeling of it twisting through his flesh made his screams even louder.
Ikuma’s body rose up, then fell at once.
Death …
That’s the only way I can see out of this.
But the relentless pain of slamming into concrete didn’t hit Ikuma. Instead, he heard something break with a cracking sound. Ikuma guessed instantly what had broken his fall.
“My guitar!”
“Huh?”
Tsukiyama stopped attacking.
Ikuma got up and took a look at what had been crushed under him.
>
“Dammit, no way!”
He opened the guitar case. Inside he saw his beloved guitar, the one he’d brought all the way from home. Parts of the body and the neck were broken, and there was extensive damage. There was no way he could play it like this.
“No!”
Ikuma crouched over the guitar, cradling it in his arms.
“Is that your guitar, then?” Tsukiyama said, coming near.
“Just leave me alone!” Ikuma cried.
Ikuma brought his kagune out again and rammed it straight at Tsukiyama.
“Calm down, give me time to assess the situation too!”
Tsukiyama slid away, avoiding the attack. Ikuma fell back to the ground, panting. His kagune disappeared; he was no longer in a fit state to fight.
“What have we here, Tsukiyama? Oh no, did you break somebody’s guitar?”
Even as he heard the mysterious voice, Ikuma thought he must’ve been imagining it. This girl who’d wandered right into the site of a slaughter without any affectations could be nothing other than an illusion.
She peered into the guitar case. “Looks like it was well loved, too. What kind of songs do you play?” she said sympathetically. This got Tsukiyama’s attention. He clapped his hands to his head and turned his eyes skyward.
“Jesus! I’ve … broken … this guy’s guitar?!”
His kagune disappeared immediately.
“Thank you, Hori. You always open my eyes for me. You’re the only one who stands by me with such tenderness.”
“I’m not standing by you, though,” said the girl he’d called Hori, completely rejecting what he’d said.
Tsukiyama did not take notice, laughing happily. “Oh, Hori, your jokes are so polished! You’re hilarious. So unique!” But then he turned to Ikuma and lowered his eyebrows in an expression of penitence.
“I have done something unforgivable to you. How could I have known you were a music lover, just like me?”
He put his hand to his chest and bowed his head like a gentleman.
“And what I’ve done to your instrument is pathetic. I’m going to tell my friend at the music store what happened. Maybe we can work something out.” He took a business card out of his wallet and stuck it in Ikuma’s guitar case. “Give them my name when you go.
