Early the next morning, Akira had arrived at the Academy’s training grounds early to prepare for practical training when she noticed that some others had gotten there first.
She saw Yukinori Shinohara, an Academy instructor whom she knew extremely well. Shinohara had been her father’s partner for a while, and he always looked out for her.
Alongside Shinohara there were two older men. Both held attaché cases in their right hands. Investigators. Something must’ve happened to make them show up at the Academy this early in the morning.
“Oh, you’re here early, Akira. Morning,” Shinohara said, noticing Akira and interrupting their conversation to greet her. The two men turned to face her.
“Is she a student?”
“Oh, this is Mado’s kid.”
It was a rather oblique comment, but the men seemed to understand instantly. One of them, a slim man who seemed to have a senior rank, narrowed his eyes as he looked at her, and she wondered what was going through his mind. But a moment later his eyes softened, searching her face.
“Wow … so you’re Mado’s daughter, the one they keep saying is top of the class this term. I’m Tada, associate rank. And this is Yanagi.”
They both bowed. They were both the same age as Shinohara. A veteran unit. But Akira noticed something curious about the way Tada looked at her. People who look at you that way are not usually your friends.
“She’s just like her mother. Thank God she’s not like her Quinque maniac father.”
Sure enough, now he has to go and praise my mother by saying something indelicate about my father.
“Watch it, Tada.”
“What? I thought the young lady would like to hear what an excellent mother she had,” he said and laughed.
Ignoring him, Akira asked Shinohara, “What happened?”
“Well, actually, last night a woman was attacked by a Ghoul in this ward. A child who lives nearby heard and yelled, so the Ghoul got away. He seems to have come in this direction.”
“It’s hard to imagine a Ghoul coming near the CCG Academy on purpose, but we had come to ask if anyone nearby had seen any suspicious persons, just to be certain. But it was a swing and a miss, as expected. Anyway, any Ghoul that runs at the sound of a child crying will turn up sooner or later.”
Tada’s prediction seemed aimed at Shinohara somehow, and Akira picked up on it.
“But if the Ghoul in question did come toward the Academy on purpose, then the Academy must hold some kind of merit to him. Can one really afford to throw away this line of investigation?”
Tada looked dazzled for a second before he began to laugh, holding his sides.
“Ha ha, what’s all this now? Not even an investigator yet and she’s already bossing us around! Boy, the elite sure are different after all.”
“I make my judgment based on what I’ve heard.”
“She certainly does talk a lot. Ah, youth. I was like that, too, once …”
After mocking her a little, Tada looked her right in the eyes.
“But if you’ve judged the situation incorrectly, it’s your life on the line.”
I probably shouldn’t snap back at him. After all, I’m just a student. But Akira responded instantly, her eyes never wavering for a second.
“There’s one thing I do know, though. Mr. Tada, you are too fat.”
Her words had nothing to do with the previous topic of conversation. Time stopped for a moment. Akira continued, unconcerned.
“Fat is our enemy, because as humans we are always behind Ghouls in terms of speed. A second’s the difference between life and death. Taking a look at you, I’d say you have about another twenty pounds to drop. And if you don’t, it’s your life on the line.”
Her criticism was scathing. Tada, having heard all he could take, turned bright red.
“What did you say to me?! Just because I disagreed with you, you got angry and went off like that? What, you think you can solve this case yourself?!”
In contrast to Tada’s fiery anger, Akira quietly folded her arms.
“I’m just an Academy student.”
“Oh, now you use that as a shield!”
“No. I’m just worried that if I solve the case, that means you’re worse than an Academy student. And that, of course, would make you worse than my father, too.”
“Akira, cut it out,” said Shinohara, intervening. Tada stared at her.
“If you think you can do it, do it! Stupid little girl,” he spat out, then left the training ground.
“Dammit, do you always have to take such a controversial stance?” Shinohara said, scratching his beard.
“What do we know about the Ghoul that ran away?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah. We have a sample of the Ghoul’s saliva, found on the victim. The kid who witnessed it said the Ghoul was wearing a black mask with red spots, like a ladybug.”
“A ladybug?” Comparing a Ghoul’s mask to a familiar insect seemed childish to her.
“So what are you going to do, Akira?” Shinohara asked, looking tired.
“I’ll need some extracurricular training,” she said, not beating around the bush.
Her intuition also worked opposite from what Tada thought.
The exchange between Tada and Akira was overheard by other Academy students who came to the training ground after Akira. The story spread in an instant.
“You moron! You got into a fight with an investigator, and an associate-ranked one at that! You’re supposed to listen to your elders, you know!” Takizawa said, fussing at her before their afternoon lecture.
He thinks he’s got the high ground for once.
“I simply offered an opinion that he could not agree with. And submitting blindly to what your superiors say is nothing but abdication of one’s duty to think freely.”
Takizawa muttered, “That’s what people always say in situations like this …” His eyes latched on to some copies lying on her desk. “What’s that? Copies from newspapers?”
“I made a copy of the article about yesterday’s Ghoul attack. And all the records of Ghoul attacks in this ward in the last five years.” She had spent the entire lunch break in the library.
“ ‘Attacked and injured, but no serious wounds.’ Don’t you think the Ghoul who attacked this woman is long gone by now?”
“No, I don’t,” she said immediately.
“So what do you think?”
“I think the culprit is still near the Academy somewhere.”
“But why here, with the CCG all over? It’s like a mouse taking a nap next to a cat.”
“That’s a remarkably easy-to-understand comparison coming from you. But it’s wrong.”
“Remarkably, huh? All right, do you have any proof or evidence?” he said, banging his fist down on the desk. Akira raised one finger.
“Intuition.”
“What?!”
Takizawa didn’t know what to say, but for Akira, this was one of the most logical things to base an investigation on.
“I have faith in my intuition.”
This is a battle not just against Tada, but against everyone who’s put my father down.
“What do you mean?” asked Takizawa, his head spinning.
That night, Akira took all the information she had found back to her room and spread out a map. First, she put a red X where the previous night’s incident took place. Then, using a color-coding system to denote cases which were thought to be linked, she put all the unresolved incidents on the map. There were lots of cases that didn’t appear to have any links.
Finally, Akira marked the locations of CCG branch offices and the Academy. Then she began to see a small trend of incidents clustered around these locations.
First, the 5th Ward branch office. There was not extensive predatory behavior in the area. Ghouls have their own common sense, and apart from a few Ghouls who liked to hunt investigators, most seemed to have decided that attacking anyone in that area was too dangerous.
On the other hand, many more incidents had taken place around the Academy in the past than near any of the 5th Ward branch offices.
It didn’t take a lot of deep thinking to see what that meant: it meant that the Academy was much less of a deterrent to Ghouls than any of the investigators in the 5th Ward. With fine instructors and experts at Ghoul extermination all over the 5th Ward, the Academy must look like a playground by comparison. It was natural. With that in mind, it was not too surprising that Ghouls would consider the Academy less risky to come near.