With Every Step

19. Beneficent

As he was learning how to live as a half-ghoul (even if there were few physical differences, he thought it an important distinction from a normal ghoul), Amon felt like a child. Making use of his kagune, getting adjusted to the sturdiness of his new body, there were so many things he had to find out on his own with no one to help. He kept in contact with Nagachika, but they had parted ways quickly because the other had a goal and Amon had nothing.

Logically, Amon knew he should leave Tokyo. Kanou and Aogiri were looking for him, and there was nothing he could do alone about any of the plots brewing in the city. Takatsuki—the Owl, he knew now—had dangled all that knowledge in front of him and then taken away the chance for him to change anything by tearing apart his whole life.

And yet he stayed.

Even if he had to fight every other day and hide away from the eyes of everybody else just to stay alive, he stayed.

Part of the reason was that he didn't have anywhere else to go. In Tokyo at least, he could use the ghouls he killed as a way to feed and thus avoid his own kind. And fighting Aogiri, lowering their numbers steadily, was something good that he could do while he was doubting his own existence. Most nights, he heard in his dreams the voices of the sixty-two other investigators who had been in that lab with him. Seidou's voice, full of condemnation, always rang the loudest. Amon was the only one to escape and he couldn't stop wondering why he was worthy of it, so he tried to make himself worthy.

But there was one more reason he couldn't leave Tokyo.

A blonde-haired, purple-eyed reason.

Amon did not stalk Akira. But he had promised to keep her alive what felt like lifetimes ago, to both her and her father, and he would be damned if he let himself forget about it.

So he stayed. He listened to the whispers on the street and sometimes to Nagachika, who was incredible at gathering information. He spotted the tension simmering all over the place before it boiled into something dangerous. He saved people who were cornered by ghouls and killed every member of Aogiri he came across.

One day, he might die with very few ever knowing he had lived in the first place. One day, one of his former colleagues—even Akira—might have to face him and kill him for what he was. There were so many tragedies still looming and Amon wasn't ignorant to the possibility of any one of them.

But until that day came, while Akira worked in the CCG to make the city a safer place, Amon would do what he could from the shadows. And if she ever found herself in danger and unable to protect herself, hopefully he could be close enough to do it for her.