The World in Half: FIRST HALF

K A P I T E L D R E I

III: ETO YOSHIMURA

It was a rather busy morning in Anteiku, her father's coffee shop in Nerima, the 20th ward of Tokyo.

The coffee shop appeared normal at first glance, like most buildings here, unless they were purposefully trying to give a different impression. Though, in reality, it was a place where ghouls could safely meet, talk, and share news, especially about the doves who had been circling the ward for months now. The CCG, as far as she and her father knew, wasn't very keen on maintaining a strong presence here. If they sent someone to investigate, it was mostly for serious cases that the public already knew about, not to have them stay as residents.

However, lately, news from fellow ghouls in the ward about a batch of CCG investigators coming to Nerima had reached their ears. It was too alarming to ignore.

Her father usually sent his right-hand man, Yomo, to check these things out. Broody, mysterious, and quiet, Yomo could be mistaken for either a serial killer or a first love interest in a book—because the second is almost always the childhood friend or someone wacky. The fact that he could stand in the corner of a room and not be noticed, even though he was practically twice her height, seemed like a big indicator of what he might be. And he never laughed, not even smiled.

Following the events of the now-called Steelbeam incident, where a young woman and a young man were involved in a crushing accident, literally, under a construction site almost a month ago, the woman had been identified as a ghoul, the Binge Eater ghoul, according to the CCG. As for the man, there wasn't much news about what they knew, but they couldn't be too sure about him either.

Still, it didn't mean they wouldn't try to find this man, Kaneki Ken, as a lead if they wanted to pursue the case of the now-dead Binge Eater. Anteiku simply couldn't take that chance of being exposed, especially since Kaneki Ken had been their employee for a few days now. Her father was too generous not to help the boy, who had been so confused, like a lost puppy the night they found him, and removing him from the staff seems a bit… harsh, even from her point of view.

It was still fresh in her mind how she found the boy in an alleyway near Anteiku on her way home one fateful night. He had been horrified by the potential meal being offered to him by another ghoul, and that's when she discovered he was a half-ghoul. But why hadn't she detected it sooner? She was there when he arrived at Anteiku a few days before the Steelbeam incident, and he smelled... completely human to her.

Nevertheless, the boy would have been ripped to shreds or driven away to be found by some other potentially dangerous ghoul in another “territory,” or as Nishiki Nishio had put it that night, a feeding ground, if she hadn't found him. She knew she had to step in and help, even if it meant risking him learning her identity, which she and her father took great care to hide.

So, she did. Although she may have scared Nishiki Nishio, the bastard, a little too much with that kick before she dragged the poor boy away and into her house. As much as she wanted to bring him back to Anteiku, something about the boy made her want to see for herself first. Maybe because he was the first she saw that was like her—a half-ghoul? Maybe because she was interested in what led to this prospect in the first place. What is he really? At first glance, she thought he was just a walking tragedy, but as it turns out, Kaneki Ken is something more entirely.

He looked… incredibly exhausted, more so than she did without sleep for almost an entire day. He was trembling and gnashing his teeth, and his eyes, or rather, his eye was black and pulsing—a single kakugan, much like her own.

Something about the way he watched her drew her close. The terrified look on his face concealed what he might truly be feeling at the moment—the hunger, the desire to eat, possibly his first true meal since the incident happened. She was thrilled by it, not so much by the idea of a random college boy wanting to eat her, of course, or of the idea that he might wrestle control to do that, but by the idea that she wasn't alone after all. She still didn't understand, mostly because the boy refused to let her, how he had come to this, but seeing how agonized he was, she simply couldn't refuse him.