Amon rejected that thought. Ukaku required a dramatically higher consumption of Rc cells compared to other types of Kagune, and so was ill-suited to a long battle. If she knows anything about her own Kagune then there’s no way she’d have this kind of circuitous fighting style. But I can’t figure out what her intention is.
Don’t think, he castigated himself.
The only thing I need to do as an investigator is destroy this Ghoul. If I keep attacking without pause and make her keep using her Kagune, eventually she’ll run out of steam. This is what I trained for.
“Hahhhh!”
Amon put all of his force on the middle of Kura’s long blade. The blade split into two. Kura was a transformable weapon. By dividing Kura down the middle to create a new blade, he now had two weapons. While Koharu’s eyes were still wide in surprise at the Quinque’s transformation, Amon threw one of the blades at her like a boomerang.
She yelped in shock.
Koharu tried to defend herself from the unexpected attack with the attaché case, but she could not protect herself against a flying, violently rotating Quinque.
“Ah!”
The attaché case flew away from her and, unable to withstand the momentum, she fell to the floor. Amon grasped Kura to himself, wanting to land the finishing blow. But Koharu was releasing large quantities of Rc cells, and even as she forced herself to stand up she avoided Amon’s attack. Then she picked up the Quinque that Amon had thrown and jumped atop the chandelier.
Dammit!
The chandelier swung left and right under her weight. Koharu leaned against the chain connecting the chandelier to the ceiling, pushing and pulling violently with her shoulders. Her winglike Kagune gathered around her shoulders like a dense fog. She seemed to have lost her momentum when she released all of those Rc cells at once after avoiding Amon’s attack.
Now was Amon’s chance, but she’d escaped to a place he couldn’t reach. He was wondering whether he should throw the Kura he still held in his right hand.
“Wait, Amon!”
Morimine’s voice echoed in his ears. When he looked over, he saw that the lieutenant had a gun pointed at Koharu.
“Morimine! If you’re not using Q Bullets, the ones specially developed for use against Ghouls, there’s no point!”
“I’m going for it!”
He narrowed one eye, then took aim and fired.
“Gah!”
The bullet hit the chain Koharu was leaning against. She instinctively removed her hand from the shaking chain, which broke her balance, and she started to fall along with the chandelier.
“Nice one!”
Amon got his Quinque ready again.
“Whoa!”
“Wha—!”
But before Amon could attack, a hail of bullets much more powerful than those from Morimine’s gun hit her. Her body was pierced through countless times.
Amon and Morimine’s eyes grew wide in surprise, but Tojo was even more surprised.
“I was just operating it, I didn’t mean to—”
Apparently while he’d been checking the condition of his Quinque, the Quinque had attacked without Tojo intending it to do so, and it had shot Koharu with ukaku Quinque bullets. Maybe his Quinque, used in place of a shield and now cracked, just malfunctioned.
But the result was that they were able to capture Koharu. Her bloody body was thrown to the ground, and Koharu’s breathing was heavy.
“Ko … taro …” Even in such circumstances, her eyes wet with blood, Koharu called out his name. “I’m … sorry …”
He’d just realized she was saying something when she apologized. Her eyes turned to Morimine, who walked over to look.
“You … too … Kyo … hei …”
“Huh? How’s she know my name?” Morimine said in confusion. Kyohei was his name, but almost nobody ever called him that.
Koharu did not answer. She looked up at Amon and Morimine, choking out a few words.
“I … took them all. And then … I ate them …”
“What?!”
“They’re … all … in that room,” she said, pointing weakly at the other room further down the hall.
Her eyes started filling up with something that wasn’t blood.
“I lived … from crime … to crime … But …”
Her eyes focused on Amon.
“Watching … you, Kotaro … gave me … courage …” She blinked, and tears spilled from her eyes. “I hope the future … that you want … comes to pass.”
With her Kagune out of sight and her eyes closed, she looked just like a human. “That somehow … this world that we were born into can be …”
She was a Ghoul, but her last wish was that a Ghoul investigator’s hope for the future would come true. It sounded like a prayer from the bottom of her heart.
And then she breathed her last.
“What does that mean?” Amon stood stunned over her, unable to understand her last words.
“Just what it sounds like,” Morimine murmured. He stood next to Amon, looking down at Koharu with pity.
“Anything born doesn’t want to die—no matter what they are. She was born a Ghoul and she had to live as a Ghoul. And that means eating people …”
So it was her wish that Ghouls themselves would disappear from this world?
“You gonna take a look in that room? We might find some answers in there, you know.”
The room where she’d said they all were. Amon and Morimine walked in slowly.
“This is …”
In a complete reversal from the luxurious hall, this room seemed to have been used as a storage room. The walls had two tiers of shelves along them, on which sat neat boxes about ten inches to a side.
“Hey, look at …”
When Morimine took the box closest to them down from the shelf, he could see that the box was labeled Mai Hirano. Immediately he shouted, “That’s the missing girl’s name!”
Mai Hirano, the owner of the barrette that was dropped off near the police station.