There is an alleyway. Angled sprays of blood on the walls, ghouls with holes where their heads had been; people cleaved in half. The bodies have been sitting in their crimson pools for a while, with the foul stench of rotting flesh in the air, and they carry signs of little, foregone attempts at regenerating the fatal wounds.

"Ghouls with high-velocity attacks," Arima remarks, "and an efficient way of killing."

They are what remains of a marauding gang of ghouls that his squad had been tasked with for merely a week—the group's approach of the 3rd ward had merited the assignment, though it's obvious with the massacre now on his hands that other people had also been watching.

Other, more dangerous ghouls.

"Arima," his deputy squad leader is saying. "We've identified them. It's almost match for match with the whole group except for three people, including the leader, Taka."

Amid the overwhelming amount of red that has managed to lodge itself everywhere, his deputy is the only member of his squad that actually manages to keep his usual expression, which happens to be a carefully blank face.

He wonders: the amount of restraint required to kill so quickly, and not in a protracted show of dominance, is uncommon for ghouls. It doesn't seem to have been a difficult battle, either—the last time the CCG had encountered such an organized group had been the raids on the 2nd ward.

Yet Owl had disappeared into the 24th ever since Kuroiwa had taken their arm. Could this mean they were resurfacing?

As it turns out, he need not have bothered.

"Up there!"

Quinques are unsheathed. His squad closes rank around him. Arima takes a careful step forward, eyes squinting at an old building's rooftop.

Crouched, with the glowing full moon as their halo, a figure watches from the roof's edge. Their body is gleaming onyx muscle from head to toe, and even their face is masked by the same black carapace; one long kagune tail is lifted above their head with the three missing gang members speared through the stomach, hanging lifeless and limp like dolls on a string.

The newcomer makes their move as Arima issues his orders: wedge, he says, as the ghoul sprouts two more kagune tails. Rinkaku! another of his squad members shouts, and before he can fire the first blast from Narukami, the ghoul has already leapt off the building, disappearing into the night.

They identify the ghoul later, through kagune secretions found on the rooftop. The alleyway had been bathed in too much blood to gather samples of anything other than the red substance.

Ghost. A fitting moniker, given their quick departure from the scene, and the fact that—according to their profile—they've avoided capture or a pitched battle with the CCG for the 20 odd years their presence has been documented in Tokyo. With the massacre, the case is closed on the marauding ghoul band; the matter of Ghost's appearance is jotted in a report, and their reassignment to another case in the 15th ward is swift.

"They're not giving us the Ghost case?"

"That would require more deliberation," Arima busies himself with the leftover paperwork from that day's mission. He hands it to his deputy, then reaches for the umbrella he has stashed in a shelf on his office.

Hirako narrows his eyes as he grips the new folder in his hands. "You don't think they'll give it to us."

That actually makes him pause. "There's barely anything in Ghost's profile. It would take a considerable amount of effort for any squad to track them down."

"Any squad, maybe," his junior counters. "But they're not you, Arima."

Arima merely smiles.

Any other squad.

Any other investigator.

Any other ghoul.

This is the difference being the reaper of the CCG makes: that he has killed enough ghouls to paint entire wards in red, taken enough of their prized kagunes to arm an army of investigators—that his attention on a case usually ends in death, and his time is the most carefully rationed in the entire bureau.

In the swirling storm of faces in his head, Ghost's is simply any other. Come what may, he thinks, and let whatever things fall into place; as the sun sets and rises each day, blood will still be on his hands, no matter whose it is.

Akiko beams when he sticks his head in Sugi that night.

"Oh!" she says, turning away from a conversation she'd evidently been having with Megumi and another customer. A quick I'll be back later, promise, is all she offers that customer before approaching him. "Lucky! I just came in myself a few minutes ago."

The kimono she's wearing today is powder pink in color, sunflowers painted on the fabric in vibrant yellows and whose outlines are in embroidered in gold. Even the matching gold flecks in her eyes seem to smile at his presence. "It's nice to see you again. Would you like a table?"

A murmured "yes, thank you," is all he can say against the strength of her friendly gaze. She leads him through a narrow hallway, where he gazes at the slope her shoulders make and the tips of her ears; her hair is pulled back into a low pony tail, swishing gently with each step.

"I don't think I've introduced myself," she is saying, "I'm Akiko. Megs's younger sister, if you have any trouble remembering." She tosses a teasing glance at him over her shoulder, which makes him pause momentarily—but she just chuckles at his surprise, and continues on to the main tearoom.

"I will say, I wasn't expecting you to be back so soon," she waves her hand at the same table he always takes, hands him a menu with a little curl to her lips. The room is empty, as he intended, save for the two of them. "Arima-san, wasn't it? My brother tells me you're a very good investigator with the CCG. I'm not surprised, considering when we first met, your boss told me you were the youngest in the force."

It would be impolite to do nothing. So he does what he thinks is the only thing he can—he nods obligingly at her unexpected praise, eyes all the while scanning the paper between his fingertips. Few people outside the CCG, he finds, really grasp the nature of their work. Few people are ever really fit to be investigators to begin with—to be able to readily kill something that walks, talks and acts human, but in fact is not. And to not only do it once; but to do it over and over again, as many times as it is necessary.

What would she say, if she knew anything of the world he inhabits? And that he was inducted into that world at the same time she was probably busy drinking tea and going to high school and laughing with her brother?

She's still smiling at him.

And his thoughts are drifting away like a bubble against the wind, a butterfly catching flight.

"Just some tea tonight," Arima says, with more words than necessary. Matcha, he could've said. He has an excess of three syllables, but this is no place for that kind of razor-sharp precision, and he doesn't think she exactly cares. Her talkativeness, he finds, gives people ideas.

"Alright, then," she nods.

"Thank you," then he adds after a small pause, "Kobayashi-san."

Her face crumples a little, like she'd eaten something the slightest bit sour. "There are two Kobayashi-san's in this teahouse," she tilts her head at him playfully, "and that's not counting when my sister's around. Akiko is fine, Arima-san."

Then she gets up and leaves. Returns a few minutes later, with a tray in hand.

"I'm sure you know this already, but there's a button underneath the table, if you need anything more."

She bows a little. Winks. Actually winks, as she waves a hand and begins to walk away. "Hmm, I can't promise that it'll be me again when you need something though, so this is farewell for now."

And that is farewell for now; it's another girl that brings him his next cup—and when he drains that one, he pays and leaves with Megumi's goodbye and nothing more.

The teahouse is uncommonly full the next night he comes, and he is left to stand before the empty desk where Megumi usually is for a few minutes, wondering if there are any tables left for him, or if there is anyone to go check for him to begin with.

But she comes to rescue him from such pondering. Her kimono this time is black as night, more formal than usual. Her hair is swept up, a rather delicate looking hairpin stuck in her hair. The sight of him in Sugi's foyer stops her short, and a grin takes over her face.

"You didn't read the sign, didn't you?"

It's a non-standard greeting, even from her. Arima pauses. "There was one?"

"By the entrance. 'We will be closed on June 2nd for the Tokyo Shogi Association's 127th Anniversary Party.' That's today, you know."

At his silence, she laughs. "You didn't!"

Well—that poses a considerable problem to his plans. He had brought a book with him that night; he had hoped—

As if sensing his thought, she spies the book in his hand. "Were you planning to read?"

He nods.

"What's it about?"

"I...don't know," he confesses. "I haven't started it yet." Hence why he had gone to Sugi.

"You can, if you want. We're technically closed for the night, but I can probably bring you something from the party. You can read in my office. I'm headed back there anyway."

She says the last few words with a wriggling of her brow.

Again, she is guileless, and her words hold nothing but warmth; her offer is generous, too generous, he thinks, for an irregular patron that only comes at night. She seems to like him a lot, for someone she only meets in passing. Or does she? He can't figure it. She is perhaps just too friendly to tell.

But there is tea, and the promise of quiet; her lightly teasing expression, and it makes him reconsider, for a few seconds, if there is any danger at all to saying yes. This is the 1st ward. This is Sugi, of all places, and it's her—

"There are a bunch of books too, if you end up not liking the one you brought."

He nods without a second thought.

Her grin returns in full force as she claps her hands in excitement.

It's with that that he finds himself at the other side of the teahouse. Her office is directly across the tearoom, where the supposed party is happening; the garden sits in between, wisteria tree completely bereft of its purple flowers already.

Her office is a little bigger than he expects. It is packed, unsurprisingly, with store-bought file cabinets and corkboards with pinned papers; bookshelves stuffed with cracked spines and knickknacks, calligraphy scrolls and bonsai; jars filled with tealeaves, an old desk but a new set of chairs.

What catches his eye are the picture frames. Hung proudly on one wall, practically filling the entire space. They're all of a man with different people, all obviously taken in Sugi.

"Ah," she says as she catches him staring. "That's my dad. Kobayashi Jukichi. He used to run the teahouse with my brother. This used to be his office, in fact."

By her tone, he gathers her father is already gone. Her pained smile confirms this as she comes to stand beside him, gazing at the picture his eyes had settled on: her father is having a cup of tea with none other than Marude Itsuki. His former superior looks twenty years younger, and so does her father; Kobayashi Jukichi looks a bit like Megumi, with the stocky frame and black hair, and the two friends are both caught in the middle of laughter.

Distantly, he remembers such a man.

He had been more wrinkled, less hair, no less sunny. Arima was sixteen when he met him: the same night he visited Sugi for the first time. He loses the exact details, but somehow Arima remembers him, how kind he had been, how welcoming—how he had spoken to him the entire night, before Marude had stolen him away and Arima had suddenly felt alone amongst a table of adults, so he had taken a step outside and…

"No one saw it coming," Akiko is still smiling, but her voice is subdued. "He's the real reason I came to Tokyo. Had to help with the family business and all that."

"I'm sorry for your loss," he offers. It's not much, and yet he feels compelled to say it all the same.

She looks at him in surprise. Eyes wide and glassy; for a moment he thinks she's going to cry, but she blinks, and blinks again. Like the second time they met each other. And like that time, she just quirks her lips, "Well, the world is what it is," and she bows her head. "But thank you."

She serves him some ordinary green tea, a little while later. Fresh from the kitchens, along with a few wagashi that had been meant for the party.

He looks at her a little differently, now: it seems so natural, the way she can serve him a cup of tea and sit down at her desk with a smile, even with reminders of her recently deceased father everywhere around her. She obviously cared about him a great deal.

"Are you a big reader, Arima-san?"

He cradles a teacup in his hands, apologizes a little as he sets his book down on her desk and pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "I read when I can." Which is about as truthful as it gets.

"You're reading a Takatsuki novel," she sits back in her chair, taking a whiff of her own teacup. "My friend tells me there are always people coming in to buy her books, no matter what time of the year."

He raises a brow. "Does your friend work in a bookshop?"

"He owns several." She replies. "He's always telling me," and here her voice drops an octave, obviously mimicking the voice of a man, "'Oh Kicchan, you have to try reading her books!'' except I can never seem to find the time. Will you tell me if you like the one you're reading now?"

"You would put my opinion over that of your friend's?"

Pleasantly, she chirps back, "No. I'll just add your opinion to the list of people who tell me I should read more."

"You don't read, then. These books," his gaze roams over the bookshelves in her office, "are all your father's."

"How clever! How did you know Megumi's just as uncultured as I am?"

And almost unwillingly, a corner of his mouth lifts in amusement.

"I wouldn't say you're uncultured," he calmly utters from behind his teacup. "To call the owners of a respectable teahouse uncultured would be rude, would it not?"

"Ha, it would be. You are too kind," she bows her head obligingly, "to be so considerate of a simple country bumpkin such as myself."

Huh. Akiko keeps a cheerfully straight face under his scrutiny—and yet he can't tell if she's serious or not.

"I was raised in Kyoto. Not the city, either," she offers.

"Ah."

"It's good breeding on my part, people are rarely able to tell," she smiles, "thank goodness, right? I confused people every time I visited Tokyo and opened my mouth."

He hums. "I would hardly call Kyoto…"

"Hush now, Arima-san. Don't ruin the joke."

And he does, though it's not without the twitching of his lips, and her serenely sipping at her tea.

A different week finds him and his squad knee-deep in an extermination campaign in the 11th ward.

Upon recognizing Arima's presence, their targets attempt to lose them by fleeing into the underside of an overpass. The operation ends up being less clean than he likes: the busy highway overhead is nearly deafening, and even without the noise, the vast columns of concrete that support the structure interfere with their communications. The visibility in a neglected area such as this is poor, at best—and try as he might to factor in these inconveniences to their method of attack, they still rendezvous out of the underpass with two squad members short.

Someone else is also on the other side.

Perched on a streetlight, watching, waiting like a raven surveying a bloody battlefield. A thick tendril of liquid muscle protruding from their back lowers something into view, and Arima actually stops, as he realizes its his deputy squad leader being set back on the ground not forty-five feet before them.

"One of your flock."

Their voice carries the same distortion a kakuja mask bestows. As if two completely different people speaking, one just milliseconds after the other, unsettling and unnatural—and yet completely, utterly calm.

Two squad members rush to secure Hirako, Narukami's bolts providing ample cover for them. With a leap and a twist through the air, Ghost shields itself from the attack with the kagune tail they'd already had out.

It disintegrates right before their eyes not soon after, but that's an easy sacrifice for a rinkaku ghoul with a kakuja; with the time that loss has bought, Ghost has already made it on the ground and broken into a run, closing the gap between them and the rest of his squad.

In a burst of speed, the ghoul veers a sharp left, avoiding Arima himself—

—An attack? IXA materializes in his grip—with sustained fire from Narukami, the kakuja probably would've fallen to pieces eventually, but he hasn't the luxury of testing this theory—one of his squad members is still missing, Ghost is already engaging another, and he isn't at all keen to lose anyone else on this mission—

Smart, he thinks, for the ghoul to take advantage of their disorganized rendezvous, and obstruct Narukami's line of fire with the bodies of his own squad members.

He gives his orders to withdraw, but his squad members are still only human, and there is that lag between his issuance and actual action; Ghost is ducking under the swings of their quinques and easily batting aside others—by the time Arima has enough space to maneuver, the ghoul easily dodges IXA's first thrust.

They're retracted their kagune and they're smaller than they appear, up close: the kakuja is black as sin itself, completely covering the ghoul head-to-toe as a series of shining, compact plates. They slide and reshape seamlessly against each other as Ghost sidesteps another of IXA's thrusts, careful to keep its tip away.

Carefully, Arima feigns an attempt at puncturing this armor. The ghoul skillfully twists away, but right into a flurry of bolts from Narukami that he had fired at the same time; the plates on Ghost's left arm momentarily course and crackle with yellow lightning, but they don't even flinch—just as quick, their kagune blooms again to encase their wielder from the RC bolts. One more tail fizzles away in the air between them, four more still remain to protect the ghoul. Two last tails launch them up, and up they go, flying backwards through the air and landing on the overpass without fail.

Then there is only the elusive Ghost looking down on him again, a splotch of black against a dizzying backdrop of speeding trucks and cars and sickly white highway lights. There are two protrusions like fox ears on Ghost's helmeted head, along with a short muzzle whose jaws interlock with jagged fangs.

Two vast, soulless eyes stare down at him.

Of course, there are no parting words. Just the ghoul swiftly disappearing again as they leap over the traffic.

Arima blinks.

Ghost really is gone.

And for the first time there is sweat pooling on his forehead, sweat he distractedly wipes away as he sheathes his quinques and cleans his glasses. When he pushes the spectacles up the bridge of his nose and gaze at the overpass, the ghoul that had been there only moments before refuses to reappear.

Gone, he has to tell himself again.

Then he turns, and all eyes are on Hirako, and the two squad members who had rushed to help him while the rest had engaged the ghoul. There's already a makeshift tourniquet for a wound in the deputy's arm, but that doesn't seem to stop the man from absently clutching the bandages all the same.

"Torimi?"

"Dead," The wounded man replies instantly. Arima nods, more curious about the deep disquiet in Hirako's tone.

"We were surrounded—Torimi was alread—already gone, but. But they came. Ghost. I—I don't understand why, but..."

Hirako doesn't usually bother himself with such roundabout ways of speaking, using oblique words like gone when he could just as easily say ripped to shreds or eaten alive or simply even dead again, and he would still be hewing closer to the truth.

Funny, Arima should think.

This is the first time he's ever heard of a ghoul slaughtering other ghouls for an investigator's sake.

This is the first he's ever lost a squad member.

Voices. Babble, in the background. Everyone seems to have fallen in shocked conversation around him, and yet he finds himself gazing up at the moon.

This is the world he lives in.

It is what it is, a familiar voice sounds in the back of his head.

Notes:

Given that your objective isn't to, say, actually fight Arima, I think it's entirely plausible for a ghoul to survive an encounter with him. Thanks as always to readers.