Ding dong~! Ding dong~!
My exhausted early morning left me desperate for more sleep, but the doorbell rudely chased away any chance of rest.
I frowned and opened my eyes. Through the window, the world had already turned bright daylight.
Eto still slept in my arms. Had she been asleep with me the whole time, or had she woken up only to lull herself back to sleep so as not to wake me? I judged the latter more likely.
I searched for my phone by feel.
The time read 11:56. Damn, I'd overslept.
Ding dong~! Ding dong~!
"Enough already…"
Who on earth was so rude as to hammer the doorbell like this? Eto, shaken awake by the noise, rubbed her eyes like a cat and sat up behind me while I made my way to the front door.
"Hello? Yes…"
"Komaaaaaaa!!!!"
"Keurgh!?!?"
No sooner had I opened the door than a perfect wrestler's clothesline slammed into my neck with satisfying force.
For a good one or two seconds, I hung in midair before the blow sent me rolling across the floor.
"Dad!?"
Eto screamed at the sudden chaos.
I raised a hand to show I was okay, then shouted at the unexpected intruder.
"What the hell are you doing, Hitokawa!!"
"Shut up, you idiot!! What the hell have you done!!"
Standing there, raging, was my insufferable old friend Hitokawa Tomoru.
The question of what I'd done sent a chill through me.
Hitokawa was a Ghoul Investigator.
He'd barely scratched a year into his official rank—still a wet-behind-the-ears rookie—but there was no doubt he was firmly on the opposite side of ghouls.
And here he was, furious, storming into the home where I was hiding a Ghoul. I couldn't help but feel a sense of dread.
But Hitokawa wasn't wearing the white coat that marked him as an investigator. He was in plain clothes, and there was no senior officer with him.
In other words, Hitokawa hadn't come here in his official capacity. That was the only relief.
So why was he acting like this? He answered my question almost immediately.
"Look at this!"
Hitokawa thrust a sheet of paper at me. Someone's composite sketch was drawn on it. Huh? I felt like I'd seen the face before—where? Then it clicked. It was the person I saw in the mirror every morning when I washed my face.…
"…Is this supposed to be me?"
"It's a bad sketch. I told you, Dad's a lot more handsome than that."
Eto sidled up and peered at the sketch, downgrading the drawing and upgrading my looks in one effortless motion.
Hitokawa folded his arms and looked down at me.
"Did you know there was a homicide nearby last night?"
"…No idea."
I wiped away the memory of the police officer I'd run into at dawn and laid on a blank expression.
"The investigation turned up ghoul fluids at the scene. So the case transferred from the police to our Ghoul Countermeasures Bureau (CCG)."
"Uh-huh. And…?"
"Shortly after the incident, a suspicious person reportedly fled the nearby checkpoint, evading the police."
A pang hit me.
"This is a composite of that suspicious figure, based on the officers' eyewitness accounts. Doesn't he look a lot like you, even if not exactly?"
A second pang.
"You're not seriously telling me you tracked me down just because of this?"
"At first, I thought they just had the wrong guy. It was dark, so they might not have seen clearly, and the details were off. But before the suspect got away, he splashed those cops in the face with some fluid. We analyzed the stuff and I'm certain it was you."
"Why?"
Hitokawa trembled and pressed his temple with a shaking hand.
"Paint, syrup, ammonia, god knows what else… After all those homemade paint bombs you used back in the day, are you kidding me?!"
Ah, right. Back in first or second grade, I'd tinkered together a homemade paint bomb. Curious about its effect, I tested it on Hitokawa and wound up making him cry.
My dad scolded me, and with a massive bump on my head, I went to apologize to Hitokawa and his parents.
"Wow, you still remember that?"
"How could I forget? That stuff was traumatic…"
Considering the sudden strange color, the awful smell, and the sticky goo that wouldn't wash off when it splattered on your face, it was indeed a memorable horror.
"Dad, I want to make that paint bomb too."
"What for?"
"So if Hitokawa barges in here again without manners, I can throw it and chase him off."
"I'll teach you when I have time. It's easy if you get the ratio right."
"Don't teach me!!"
Hitokawa's scolding faded into the background until he dropped a bombshell I couldn't ignore.
"Anyway! Because of this, the CCG's looking for you right now!"
"What did you say?"
The CCG was hunting me?
If I had nothing to hide, I'd brush it off. But I absolutely couldn't be discovered, so tension gripped me.
"By some coincidence, the same officers who questioned me earlier found a few drops of what appeared to be human blood at that checkpoint. They're thinking you might be the ghoul suspect—or otherwise connected to the case."
'…!'
A few drops of blood.
The source wasn't hard to guess.
The guitar case shoved in the back of my closet.
Under normal circumstances, it would've been sealed so no blood leaked. But I'd forced in far more meat than usual, and it had sprung a leak.
The blood discovered there was probably mine.
This was bad. If I stayed silent, it would only get worse, so I rushed to respond.
"A ghoul? Me? No way."
"I thought so too—until I realized it's too dangerous to report without certainty. So I'll ask you plainly: Why were you at that spot at that time instead of sleeping?"
The case wasn't related to the murder, but I was doing something far more troublesome.
I couldn't let Hitokawa suspect me in this matter. But I couldn't just lie either.
One lie leads to a thousand more. I'd be caught in no time.
The only way to deceive someone completely is to mix truth with lies so they can't distinguish them.
Truth that can mask lies… The truth I could tell him…
There was indeed one truth I could tell Hitokawa, but I couldn't reveal it to anyone else.
I stole a glance.
"…?"
When I looked at Eto, she tilted her head and met my eyes with a curious stare.
"Wait here at home for a moment."
I stroked Eto's head, then tapped Hitokawa on the shoulder and gestured toward the door.
"Let's move to another location."
"…?"
Hitokawa looked puzzled for a moment but must have sensed something in my tone, because he quietly followed me out.
He said nothing until we rode the elevator down, but as soon as we stood outside the building's front gate, he spoke up.
"What's going on?"
"…."
I wordlessly pulled the cylindrical case from my pocket and tossed it to him. He caught it deftly, his eyes flicking to the English printed on the side.
"Ah, al-pra… alpra…? Alpraz…?"
"Alprazolam. It's the medication I've been taking."
"Medication? Are you sick?"
"Sick? I suppose… My body's fine, but something's off up here."
tap, tap.
I tapped my chest, and Hitokawa frowned in confusion.
"Or maybe up here."
tap, tap.
This time I tapped my head.
"What are you talking about?"
"It's an anxiolytic."
"…!?"
An anxiety medication.
To put it plainly, it's a psychoactive drug.
Hitokawa looked stunned that his friend was actually taking something like this.
"You… why are you…!"
"Ever since my father died… Something changed in me. Now even horror movies on TV make me queasy. The moment a corpse shows up, I'm rushing to the bathroom."
"Koma…."
"Hey, Hitokawa…"
I was so relieved this conversation was happening where Eto couldn't hear.
Not just because of the content—but because I must have looked more drained than Hitokawa had ever seen me.
"Do you know what it feels like for the fear of death to eat away at your mind every single day?"