The Big City

With dreams in my head and my instrument on my back I go to the city. Let this sound someday reach the world.

“Okay, I’m heading off now.”

The Shinkansen platform, just before departure. A young man stood with his beloved guitar slung on his back and huge suitcases in both hands. His friends who had come to see him off patted him on the shoulder and wished him good luck.

Momochi Ikuma, 22 years old. An aspiring musician moving to Tokyo.

“Mom?” Ikuma called to his mother, who was standing at a slight remove with a sad expression on her face. But she did not take a step toward him. Ikuma walked over to her.

“I’m gonna do my best, so don’t worry,” he said.

The bell signaling that the train was about to depart began to chirp. Ikuma got on board in a hurry. The doors closed, and the Shinkansen slowly pulled away.

“We’re all behind you!”

“Good luck!”

His friends yelled out words of encouragement from the platform. His mother waved goodbye with tears in her eyes. And for Ikuma, the platform became smaller and smaller as the town he had been so used to living in suddenly got far away.

Ikuma thought about his friends and the look on his mother’s face, and he cried alone.

Momochi Ikuma was a Ghoul.

“Wow, amazing …”

When he arrived in Tokyo, Ikuma was overwhelmed by the number of people everywhere. Occasionally he had come to Tokyo to go to concerts, but this dwarfed all those times.

All that seemed far away now that he was, from today on, living in Tokyo.

Ikuma gave himself a quick slap on the cheek to get motivated, then he excitedly boarded his next train.

It was true outside of Tokyo, too, but generally it seemed to Ikuma that a rough sort of people gathered here. And the same was true for Ghouls too. Tokyo was right in the middle of the country. The Ghoul population was huge, so something unexpected could happen at any moment. Tokyo was also the home of the CCG, professional Ghoul killers. Too bad if you got caught up by them.

“All right, finally here.”

Ikuma had chosen to live in the relatively peaceful 20th Ward, not too far from the heart of the city. There was lots of green space, even some fields here and there—it looked a little like his hometown.

And it was in the same neighborhood as Kamii University, so lots of other people his age lived there, making for good camouflage.

But the house was a tiny sliver of a place, which he couldn’t get over. It was much smaller than his parents’ house, but the rent was insanely high. Still, from now on this was his castle. First he had to buckle down to be able to pay the rent and utilities.

Ikuma took his guitar out of its case. It had been his closest companion since he bought it in high school with money from his part-time job. He stretched his hands and started playing a song by his favorite band.

“Hey, shut it!” His neighbor banged on the wall and yelled at him to stop, so Ikuma quit playing quickly and apologized sheepishly through the wall. He checked his watch. It was 11:00 p.m.

Fair enough, he thought. Welcome to the city, huh?

And this is how Ikuma’s Tokyo debut came to an end on his first day.

The next day Ikuma got a magazine of job listings and looked for something part time. He decided to go with a job as a mover. After all, he was a Ghoul and thus had several times the strength of a human.

There was just one more thing that Ikuma definitely had to do in order to continue living. That was securing some “food.”

Sure, he had the “lunch box” that his mother had given him, but someday that would run out. Now that he was living on his own away from home, he would have to be able to get food on his own.

Ikuma changed into some black clothes that wouldn’t stand out, got on the cheap bike he’d bought at a secondhand store, and set out into the darkening streets of the city.

“Whew, made it.”

He had finally arrived at a famous suicide spot on a well-known hill. It was nearly two, so it was already pitch-black, and nobody was around.

He had a good view from where he stood, and he could see a sea of trees for about twenty meters down the hill. Ikuma sniffed hard, smelling for something.

“Really, nothing?”

He had thought this would be an easy place to find a corpse, but no scent of blood or death came to his nose.

But he couldn’t just give up that easily.

After that night, Ikuma headed for the hill after work every day. With a four-hour round-trip it was quite hard work, but he used the time to work on his lyrics and come up with melodies in his head, and it wasn’t that hard if he sang to himself.

“Hey, sorry, excuse me …”

But day after day he was faced with nothing but disappointment. Days went by wasted. Before he realized it, he had been in Tokyo for over a month.

“Oh, this isn’t good …”

The “lunch box” his mother had given him was completely empty, and so was the refrigerator. Ikuma dragged himself outside sluggishly.

Better change it up. But what if I change location and run into someone? Oh God … he thought to himself.

He decided to ride to his usual hill that day anyway. As he neared the hillside, he was just thinking that he’d better come up with somewhere else to go if he struck out again that night when it happened.

The wind gently caressed his cheek as Ikuma suddenly hit the brakes on his bike.

“That smell …”

It was the smell of death.

Ikuma started pedaling with all his might. The bike tenaciously climbed the hill, but it was too slow for Ikuma.

“Here!”

Ikuma left his bike on the side of the road and ran off with all the force in his body. His eyes turned red at once, and his limbs had the power to act in response. It was his true nature, sleeping inside him until now. He kicked the ground once and the soil and grass flew a few meters away.

“Car!”

The hill was always deserted, but today of all days, there was a car parked at the top. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the car. The smell was even stronger there, changing his hunch into a conviction. Keeping up his momentum, Ikuma jumped down from the hill.

“What? Nothing?”

When he landed there was no corpse there as he’d expected. There were bloodstains on the ground, as well as an incredibly intense smell, but he couldn’t see a body anywhere.

“W-what’s going on?”

In the darkness, it was hard to search the nearby area. No way could another Ghoul have caught the scent and taken the corpse away, he thought. Ikuma looked up at the sky, not knowing what to do. And that’s when he realized someone was staring at him.

He screamed in shock and fell backward.

Ikuma’s eyes popped wide open, his lips were bloodied, and he had twigs stuck to his body. Just like the prey of a butcherbird impaled on a branch for later, the man’s corpse hung from a tree. He seemed to be in his fifties or thereabouts. When I jumped down I never would’ve anticipated this, Ikuma thought.

“H-how did you die?”

There was no reply to Ikuma’s question, of course. Putting his hands on his hips, Ikuma pushed himself up and took a look at the man.

“Why did you have to die, hm?”

Ikuma gently brought his hands together and silently prayed for the man. Then, kicking at the soil and jumping up, he climbed the tree.

“This might hurt a little, sorry.”

Ikuma put his weight on the branch of the tree that the man was stuck on, bending it until it snapped, and the man fell to the ground. Then he jumped down and pulled the branch from his body, which was lying on the grass. His eyes were fully open, as was his mouth, which looked like it was ready to scream. Ikuma wanted to close them both, but he realized it would probably be considered strange to go that far.

Ikuma looked the corpse over again. The man’s right arm had extensive damage to it and looked like it might tear off even now.

“I’m really sorry …”

Ikuma put his hands together again before pulling the man’s right arm off. If I just leave it at this maybe they’ll think a wild animal got at him.

He put the arm in a plastic bag, wrapped it in a cloth, and slipped it into his bag. Ikuma put his hands together in prayer again over the man’s body before leaving the scene.

“Better deal with this quickly.”

When he got back home, Ikuma put the arm on a cutting board and got out a knife. He cut the meat off the bone, minced it, and formed it into meatballs. Then he put the meatballs in hot water along with the bone, waited for the water to come to a boil, and then removed them from the pan.

“Smells great,” he said to himself.

But he wasn’t going to eat it all now. He chilled the meatballs, wrapped them up, and put them all in the freezer.

He put the bone on the table, as well as a single cup of the broth.

“Thank you for this meal,” he said, putting his hands together in gratitude, before drinking the broth.

“Yum …”

Next he gnawed at the pieces of meat that were stuck to the bone. Once he’d crunched away at it and gnawed it clean, his stomach was full. He reflected on how glad he was to have a small appetite.

Then he washed and dried the bone again before breaking it up with a hammer and turning it into bone meal.

This’ll keep for a while, he thought.

Ikuma was filled with relief, but at the same time he also felt a sense of the meaninglessness of life well up inside him.

“I wish someone had been there for you, other than me,” he muttered to himself, staring at the fridge. But I eat people’s tragedies.

“I’m no better than a hyena …”

He spent his days at his part-time job, and his nights looking for corpses. Any spare time he spent busking in front of train stations or in parks. What he really wanted was an audition in some big industry office somewhere, but he wasn’t familiar with Tokyo yet so he didn’t know what to do or where to go.

He was getting used to this area little by little, though. There seemed to be a lot of coffee shops around, because whenever he walked down the street he caught the smell of good coffee. He still couldn’t afford that kind of indulgence, but one day, when he was on his feet, he wanted to try a cup of coffee at one of those places.

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.

“You’ve been mortally wounded, but if you eat it might do something for you. I should go procure some food for you, properly speaking, but ironically, I’m busy preparing for tomorrow. When you’re better I’d love to hear your songs. Now, I must beg your pardon.”

With that, Tsukiyama and the girl disappeared into the darkness. Ikuma stood up, holding the wound on his shoulder.

“Oh man … This is bad …”

He had lost a ton of blood, his body had sustained massive injuries, and a ferocious hunger was welling up within him. His eyes gleamed a fiery red, and in this state he wouldn’t be able to resist attacking a living person to kill and eat them.

But that’s the one thing I won’t do!

“What do I do …”

All logic disappeared from his mind, and as he racked his brain he finally came up with something.

“Ante … iku …”

How ironic is it that I’ve avoided Ghouls all this time, only to be attacked by a Ghoul, and my last resort means relying on Ghouls?

Ikuma put his guitar case on his back and headed for Anteiku.

An intense pain shot through him with every step, and as he walked his Ghoul instincts coursed through his body. Reason and instinct became entwined in his mind, and he felt like he was losing his mind.

“God is … there …”

Ikuma began singing his own song, his voice thick and hoarse. His voice barely made a sound, and it kept breaking, but he sang with all his might.

“Don’t … lose sight …”

Ikuma turned the corner and finally saw the café ahead of him. It was late, but luckily the lights were still on.

They’ll help me somehow, he thought.

Just then, he collapsed on the spot, the relief perhaps having taken the energy right out of him. And he lay there, unable to move.

“No … way …”

Ikuma put both of his hands against the ground and tried to push himself up somehow. But his elbow was broken, and his energy left him. It wasn’t memories or regrets that ran through his mind as he faced death.

I want … I want … I want to eat someone!

It was a greedy cry for food.

“Wh … why?”

Ikuma balled his hands up into fists and groaned mournfully.

“Why? Why do we …”

Hot tears ran down his cheeks.

“Why do we have to eat humans?”

All of his energy had been used up now. He couldn’t take one step.

“Hey there, are you okay?”

Oh God, I’ve been found by a woman on her way home from the office.

And she smells delicious.

She approached him cautiously.

Ikuma’s heart leapt. As his pulse pounded, blood coursed through his body. Ghoul blood.

Do it, man, eat her. You’re hungry, right? What are you waiting for?

His instinct, now surpassing his reason, called to him. He could not fight the Ghoul blood he was drenched in.

Oh, this is it. This is why they want to take their own lives, he thought to himself, probably in the same instant.

“Hey, what happened?”

Suddenly, he heard loud banging noises nearby. The woman stood up, surprised, and looked in the direction they’d been heard from.

“It’s rockets … fireworks?”

The sound brought Ikuma back to his senses. He felt the heaviness of the guitar on his back, and he gritted his teeth.

Then, in the direction of the noise, he saw something enormously frightening. It sent chills down his spine so cold that it was hard to breathe. Something Ghouls must avoid at any cost was there.

“What’s all this commotion?”

Just then, a girl with black hair came dashing out of Anteiku. She looked in the same direction as Ikuma before turning her attention to him in surprise.

“Touka, do you know what just …”

Next, a boy with dark hair appeared from inside the shop. His eyes followed the girl’s over to Ikuma in astonishment. Ikuma could see his own bright-red eyes reflected clearly in the boy’s eyes.

“Are you all right?”

He rushed over to Ikuma and covered his red eyes with his own hand to hide them.

I’m saved.

Ikuma closed his eyes before letting go of consciousness.

IV

The smell of coffee hit him.

It was that smell that reeled him in and made him open his eyes. Slowly the ceiling came into view.

“Has he come to?” he heard someone near him say. The room was tinged by soft sunlight.

“I …”

With his head in his hands he tried to sit up, but the boy who seemed to be taking care of him said, “You should try to sleep a little longer,” and forced him to lie back down.

“You’re at a café called Anteiku. My name is Ken Kaneki.”

“Ken …”

That’s the name the guy told me when I had a run-in with him at the suicide spot. Was he talking about this boy?

“How are your injuries?”

Ikuma closed his hands into fists and let them go again. He could move his hands perfectly fine. That ferocious hunger had already disappeared, and both his body and mind felt calmer.

I’ve been saved, Ikuma again realized. But he was horrified at the same time.

I had no idea starvation would be so intense.

If it hadn’t have been for those fireworks and these guys showing up, I would’ve killed and eaten that kind woman who asked if I was okay.

“Yomo told me a little about you. He said you’ve been trying to avoid other Ghouls and blend in with human society.”

Is that the guy from the suicide hot spot?

Ikuma took another look at the boy who’d introduced himself as Kaneki. He had a distinctive smell to him, a mix of the smell of a female Ghoul and a human.

Kaneki looked at Ikuma, who was silent. “Oh, sorry! It’s all right if you don’t want to talk. You must be very tired still …” he apologized as if he had been out of line.

He was not so much curious as he had a desire to understand things deeply, by experiencing them directly. He was a kind of Ghoul that Ikuma had rarely seen before. I think he’s a little bit like me.

“My mother … was a human,” Ikuma said, laying it right out there, as if he had been invited to by the uniqueness of the situation.

“What?” Kaneki said, confused. “What do you mean? Do you mean that you … used to be a human too?”

He could sense Kaneki’s unease as he said the word “too” but Ikuma shook his head.

“I’ve been a Ghoul since the day I was born. But I was raised by humans.”

Ikuma began to tell Kaneki a little of his story.

My mother is a top surgeon. And her husband was a doctor too.

But they found it difficult to conceive a child together, and finally, after undergoing fertility treatments, they had a child after seven years of marriage.

They were delighted, and they took their roles as parents seriously.

But six months after the birth, her husband collapsed from overworking and died.

My mother was grief-stricken. She could not forgive herself for not noticing her husband’s grave state even though she was a doctor.

But my mother still had a child to take care of.

She knew she had to be both mother and father, and do it well. That thought was enough to make her go on living.

But a few days before the child’s first birthday, it happened.

The child died.

The child always got cranky at night, but that night and that night only, he fell fast asleep.

My mother woke up in the middle of the night. “Sound asleep, aren’t you?” But when she caressed the child’s cheek, he was incredibly cold.

My mother frantically tried to resuscitate him. The child did not come back to life.

She had now lost everything. The only thing she had left to lose was her sanity. She wandered through the town in the pouring rain, clutching her dead child in her arms.

Let me die too, she thought. But as she wandered, she saw a woman lying down, hiding in the shadow of a building.

Perhaps it was her instincts as a doctor that made her do what she did next.

Just as she asked the woman if she was all right, the woman looked at her.

With pure red eyes.

My mother went weak in the knees at this grotesque sight, and she was paralyzed with fear. But just then she heard a baby begin to wail.

She stared at the woman unthinkingly. The woman had a baby no more than a year old clutched to her chest.

My mother saw that the woman had wounds all over her, but there was not a scratch on the child.

She had been defending the child from harm.

Now it was the woman’s turn to look at the child cradled against my mother’s chest. The woman’s eyes grew wider with surprise.

My mother turned away in a hurry to hide, but the woman apparently had noticed that the baby was dead.

“Please …”

The woman held out the child with trembling hands toward my mother.

“Save this child …”

My mother heard men shouting in the distance.

“She must’ve run this way!”

“I’m gonna find you!”

My mother understood then. That the woman was a Ghoul, and that the child was as well.

The baby started crying weakly.

“I hear the baby!”

At the same time, my mother understood something else.

That the woman was also a mother, the same as her. And that the woman loved this child just as much as she loved her own child.

My mother took the Ghoul child in her arms and handed her own child to the woman.

“Thank you …”

My mother ran off. As she did, the Ghoul woman whispered, “I’m so sorry, just a little bit …” and started nibbling on my mother’s child.

Having eaten a little flesh, the woman was able to push herself to the limits of her strength. She stood up and went running in the opposite direction from my mother.

“She was just here!”

Aware that there were multiple men chasing after the woman, my mother ran through the rain like a woman possessed.

The next morning in the newspaper she saw a story about a Ghoul mother and child.

A Ghoul mother, cornered by investigators, had apparently jumped into the sea, still clutching a child. The mother’s body had been found but the child’s had not.

My mother read the article with the child in her arms. That child was me.

It was a secret too large to deal with on her own. She confided in her parents. When she told them, they nearly fainted from shock, but eventually they accepted it after seeing how determined my mother was.

My mother returned to work at the hospital early. During the day, she dropped me off with my grandparents, and in the evening she would give me “food” she had procured from the hospital.

She taught me from a relatively early age that I was a Ghoul. And she was very open with me about what kind of standing Ghouls have in the human world.

And she raised me as a human.

When I was a small child and unable to control my feelings I stayed at home, but when I got older I went to primary school, like any other child my age. My mother told the school that I had food allergies, and she always packed a lunch for me.

So I was raised with human values. Of course I’ve never killed anyone.

“I think my mother wishes I would’ve become a doctor, but I don’t have the head for it. Plus I have my own dreams,” Ikuma said. His broken guitar sat next to his cot.

“They say songs can cross borders. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Ghoul or if you’re human. I just think, like, it would be great if I could write a song that really reached people. But maybe it’s stupid for a kid from the country to have that dream …”

“Of course it isn’t!” Kaneki said immediately, rejecting Ikuma’s self-deprecation. He paused. “It makes me happy to hear that a Ghoul like you feels so close to humans.” Kaneki spoke as if he were representing all humans. “I’ve got your back.”

Ikuma didn’t know what to make of this mysterious boy who smelled like both a human and a Ghoul. But for some reason, what he’d said had made Ikuma feel like he could realize his crazy dream.

V

A few weeks after he was rescued by the people at Anteiku, Ikuma was busking in front of the station. The guitar in his arms was the well-loved one he’d brought all the way from home.

After what happened, Ikuma had actually gone to the music store that Tsukiyama had recommended. He had been afraid, but he’d also felt that he had a legitimate right to compensation from the person who broke his guitar.

The owner of the store had heard about what happened from Tsukiyama, and he offered to provide Ikuma with any used guitar, free of charge.

But Ikuma told him that he wanted his own guitar fixed. No guitar but the one he’d brought from his hometown would do.

The strings had snapped, the body and neck had broken and split into two pieces, and everywhere he looked he could see damage. It looked like it would be impossible to repair.

But the owner said, without hesitation, “Well, Tsukiyama said to do what I could,” and Ikuma had no idea how he’d done it, but a few days later the owner returned the guitar to him, restored.

As for the problem of how to obtain food that had been plaguing him, through an arrangement made by the manager at Anteiku, the famous suicide spot where he had originally been getting food was handed over to him as his “territory.”

They had also told him that Anteiku could provide him with meat they had procured, but he thought he would forget the gravity of a life if he got used to just being given meat.

By facing people’s deaths and getting his own food by himself, he could not forget that he was a Ghoul, which was something he thought was important in order for him to continue living in human society.

Fortunately, his territory was in the middle of nowhere, so there were no other Ghouls around there, either.

During a small break in songs, something took him by surprise. He was taking a drink from a can of coffee when a boy ran over waving, saying, “Hello-o!

“Remember me? I heard you here before. My name’s Hideyoshi Nagachika! But everyone calls me Hide!”

“Of course I remember you, man. Okay, Hide it is. I’ll be sure to call you that from now on.”

Hide smiled broadly at hearing Ikuma say his name.

“Oh, and I brought my friend, too! Kaneki—hey, Kaneki!” Hide yelled, turning around.

Kaneki?

He looked in surprise to see another boy come rushing up.

“Man, Hide, I said you were too excited.”

He had black hair and wore an eye patch over his left eye. And he had the smell of a human mixed with a Ghoul.

When he realized Ikuma was standing there, his eye popped in surprise.

“Uh, so, Hide, who’s this artist you’ve been talking about?”

“This guy! Sorry, can I, uh, ask your name?”

Ikuma thought about the pain that Hide had showed him after listening to his song. And he thought about the unique smell that Kaneki had, making it hard to tell which side he was on.

“Did you used to be a human, too?”

What Kaneki had said at Anteiku came back to Ikuma. He felt that he’d seen a glimpse of their anguish and its cause. But Ikuma introduced himself, sounding cheerful.

“I’m Ikuma Momochi. And you are … ?” he asked Kaneki, pretending it was the first time they’d met. Kaneki stood up straight and introduced himself.

“I’m Kaneki, Ken Kaneki,” he said.

Ikuma began plucking at the guitar strings.

“Well, since you guys came all this way, you might as well listen to a song!”

This town is so much more terrifying than I imagined, and so much kinder, too.

He started singing a song he’d written since moving to Tokyo.

Ikuma Momochi, a Ghoul living in Tokyo.