The Reaper and the Angel of death (arima kishou fanfic)

III - Real Ghouls

Sakurako's pov

In the end, the instructors' curiosity didn't get satisfied. They had to declare another draw when neither of us was "killed" after nearly an hour.

Arima's pov

One quinque practice session, Sakurako and I somehow got ourselves trapped with "quinques" at each other's throats. Neither of us could move without getting "killed" by the other's "quinque".

After standing like that for about five minutes, I suggested a truce.

"What's a truce?" Sakurako asked.

Explaining a truce to a ten year old would not be easy.

"Um, like, two people who are at war decide not to have a war anymore," I tried.

Sakurako wrinkled her brow in confusion.

"So they sign a peace treaty and say they don't want to fight," I continued, "and they stop killing each other and... and..."

I was beginning to have trouble understanding what I myself was saying.

"What I mean is, both of us can put down our quinques and agree to stop fighting," I said.

Sakurako frowned at me suspiciously, but snapped her "quinque" in half, spoiling it. I did the same. Nothing happened. Normally, once the fight had ended, the doors would unlock and an instructor would come in.

"Looks like they aren't going to declare a draw just because we did," Sakurako said.

We sat down on the floor and decided to talk.

"What's your favourite lesson?" I asked.

"I like Ghoul Torture. It's quite relaxing, just sitting in the classroom and watching videos about how to get information out of ghouls. Math is fun too. What's yours?"

"Probably Quinque Usage theory class. Sometimes the teacher brings all sorts of interesting quinques to class to show us."

Finally, an instructor entered the room, shouting at us angrily for destroying the "quinques". I suspected he was furious at me for even bringing up the idea of a truce, when we were supposed to fight to the "death". We were given new "quinques" and told to fight, but Sakurako and I just sat down and talked some more.

Once it became evident that we had no intention of fighting, we were let out of the room by the same enraged instructor. I had to suppress laughter at the fury on his face.

Later that day, I passed by an office and overheard people discussing me. Evidently, they were at their wit's end about what to do with me and Sakurako.

"Those two children are the best at fighting in the whole Sunlit Garden. Beating anyone in a fight is a piece of cake for them. The only way to train them properly is to make them fight each other. But they refuse to! Just this morning, they broke their fake quinques and were sitting on the floor of the battle room chatting away. Can you believe that they agreed to a truce?"

"Then make them fight simulation ghouls."

"Our computers can't work fast enough. Have you even seen Sakurako Yamaguchi doing ghoul fighting practice? And don't let me get started on Kishou Arima."

"Bring in some real ghouls."

"Don't be stupid. Where would we get the ghouls? And do you think the CCG will let us keep ghouls in here."

"The CCG will probably be happy to give us some useless B or C rate ghouls from Cochlea for these children's practice. After all, aren't we training them to become CCG investigators? The CCG never questions our methods nowadays anyway."

"That's crazy. But I don't have any better ideas myself and won't anytime soon. You know what, go and ring up the CCG and ask for as many ghouls as you want. You should ask for maybe 10 or 15 so we can last a while."

Two days later, I saw a truck with many locked boxes driving into the Sunlit Garden and the boxes being unloaded and put in one of the unused buildings. Boxes that looked big enough to fit a person or a ghoul in.

That was how I found myself fighting actual ghouls at the age of 11.