Amon waited outside of Kiyomi High School at a nearby bus stop, watching as the students scattered off, going to various club activities, cram schools, and study sessions.
He followed the students turning in the direction of the nearby library from about fifty yards behind and across the street. He watched them trudge into the lobby area through the large front windows. At least the small mob was all in the same uniforms; it made them easy to keep track of from a distance. From street level, he caught sight of the last few stragglers racing up a central staircase.
He couldn't enter the building just yet; he would be made in an instant if he was right. His height was a serious hindrance when it came to detective work—he could be spotted from clear down the street. Glancing around, he noted that the library was surrounded on two sides by a bustling retail space-shops and restaurants. Maybe if he was lucky…
The first place he tried, a bar brasserie on the second floor of the adjacent shopping plaza, didn't have any good sight lines into any of the library's windows. There was a poke place a little farther down in a more promising location, but they were closed for remodeling. One café had good window seating, but the only thing he could see in the library's windows were bookshelves and empty aisles. The urban gardening store looked out into a cozy seating area in the library, but he didn't recognize any of the patrons. Finally, he found a bank of windows by an elevator that looked directly onto a table across the street.
A table covered in study guides and surrounded by teenagers in their school uniform. Perfect.
He calmly walked back to the café—no need to be more memorable than he already was—and purchased one black coffee and a newspaper. He sat on the deep window ledge and cracked open his newspaper, looking exactly like a salaryman taking a quick break in an out-of-the-way corner.
The trial of this stakeout, thought Amon, was the fact that the only thing more tedious than studying was watching someone study. The students occasionally got distracted, chattered with each other, took bathroom breaks, but most of the time they were taking notes or silently scanning their material.
The one he was watching, the one with the indigo hair, appeared to be one of the more focused students. She would occasionally chat with her study partner—the amateur chef, Yoriko Kosaka, he guessed, but it was hard to be sure at a distance—or snap at one of the talkative boys on her other side.
She looked absolutely normal. Not a single investigator could have picked her out of a lineup. But she was the only girl in Ms. Kosaka's grade with zero online presence, and she appeared to be in her immediate social circle as well. She wasn't involved in any clubs, and she didn't have any photos in the yearbook.
He was able to find an old record on file in the school's server, listing her as exempt from any club requirements due to her part-time employment at a small coffee shop called Anteiku.
He knew of Rabbit's connection to Eyepatch and he knew Eyepatch was after Dr. Kano. He knew that the Binge Eater disappeared, along with Dr. Kano, after his organ transplant scandal. He knew that Ken Kaneki was the recipient of those organs, and that he worked at Anteiku for a while before disappearing from public life as well. He knew that Touka Kirishima worked with Ken Kaneki at the café. And now he knew that she was friends with the human girl who made the cookies that the ghoul Rabbit had given him.
He knew, down to his bones, that he was on the verge of cracking this whole case wide open.
He'd always thought that the ghouls' ability to blend in with humans was evidence of their sinister nature. They were wolves in sheep's clothing. The first and only time he'd let a ghoul's gentle appearance overshadow that fact, he was nearly eaten by Applehead. Dropping your guard in the field like that was a death sentence.
And yet…the world he thought he knew felt more brittle than ever before these days. He knew he wanted to do the right thing. He wanted justice. But the step beyond that first step…He didn't feel the rock-solid confidence he used to have. The fire in his belly was no longer raging.
At the Academy, he had once sat through the lecture of a former Cochlea interrogator who was recovering from a savage mauling at the hands of a prisoner.
"Much like a human psychopath, ghouls totally lack empathy. They don't feel remorse or guilt, they are creatures of pure self-interest. Of course they are—any cold-blooded predator must be devoid of empathy for their prey! Like human psychopaths, they know the right words to say and the right facial expressions to make when they're pleading for their lives. Don't fall for it. They're just manipulating your human capacity for empathy, pressing the right buttons in your psyche to make you think there's something in them that deserves your mercy. It's a hunting tactic. The ones that fall for it don't survive long."
The instructor paused to dab a handkerchief to some saliva that dribbled from his torn lip. "No matter what they say or how they behave, they're killers. There's nothing but a soulless monster behind the act. When it comes to ghouls, I encourage you to extinguish any twinge of pity you may feel towards them. You're human, and there's something in you that recoils at harming others, but you can be trained out of that with time and practice. Women, children, crying, screaming, begging—prepare yourself to ignore that feeling as it will only be used against you. Learn to put it aside completely and do your job."
As he finished his lecture, the battle-scarred man was met with the thunderous applause of dozens of galvanized students. No one paused to consider the logical conclusion of his recommendation: the investigators were being told to kill the empathy that elevated them beyond the heartless murderers they hunted.
Years after that class and soon after the Aogiri raid, he connected that interrogator to Jason. The epiphany came while eating breakfast in silence as he contemplated Eyepatch, his deceased mentor, and Rabbit. He recalled a quote he heard somewhere—when fighting monsters, you must be careful not to become a monster.
The thought had disturbed him so much he shoved it away and hurried down to his home gym, where he did pullups until he couldn't feel his hands and his mind quieted down.
The girl with indigo hair was the last one there, sitting in the warm glow of the study room. It was dark out and the street was quieting down, but she was feverishly scribbling in some sort of workbook.
She reached an unseen breaking point, leaned back in her chair, covered her face with her book, and appeared to scream into it. Then she immediately collected herself and went back to writing at breakneck speed.
The frustration was so…human. And she was alone, so there was no one to put on a human act for.
Amon's feet were moving before his mind made a decision.
She was alone, the night was relatively quiet, and whatever he was going to do, now was the time to act.
What was he going to do? Bring the Rabbit to justice. But what did justice look like?
He felt shaky about his role as judge, jury, and executioner. That kind of hesitation will get you killed, a voice in the back of his head warned, but even louder was the blaring need to take this chance, to act and act now.
The newspaper and empty coffee cup were disposed of. Down the stairs, through the sliding front doors, across the street. Into the library, up the central staircase.
He had to peek around a couple of bookshelves before he figured out the interior layout of this building. Through the aisles he caught sight of the table near the windows.
Amon drew a silent breath and walked into the study space.
There she was, facing the windows and hunched over the table.
"I'm sorry—I'm nearly done with this practice test. You can have the whole table in five minutes…" She trailed off, most of her focus clearly on the practice test.
It was her voice. A little higher pitched, frazzled-sounding, but hers. Rabbit's. He felt a deep thrill of satisfaction at his investigative skill.
"That's not why I'm here."
The girl sat up and turned around, blinked at him, but otherwise didn't miss a beat. "Did you need something from me, sir?"
This close she was younger-looking than he'd imagined. Her one visible eye was innocent, almost childish. That, he knew for sure now, was all an act. She was one cool customer and he'd do well to remember that.
"I'm good at my job, Touka Kirashima."
She stared at him silently for a moment. She was breathing a little fast. Otherwise, though, she stayed relaxed.
An alarm on her phone went off. Despite her casual demeanor, she didn't look away from him to check it like most normal people would. She knew better than to let herself get distracted and give him an opening to attack.
He glanced at the phone, though, and the small rabbit charm attached to it.
Without breaking eye contact, she reached over and hit the screen to silence it. "Well, you just ruined that literature test. I felt like I was doing really great on it, too."
This was his fork in the road. The point of no return where he had to decide whether to apprehend her or, for the first time in his career, intentionally act in a way that went contrary to the standards of the CCG. Here was the choice of whether to let his insidious, traitorous, confusing thoughts become reality and give them a life beyond idle speculation.
He had seen her without a mask, he knew her name, he knew her school and her work. He had no more excuses for not taking down the Rabbit. And yet, he just stared at her. Ready to act, but not sure how.
This was the moment he had dreamed about for ages now, and…it was not what he imagined. He was tired after sitting around and waiting for an opening for so long, he was surrounded by old books and bothering a girl who was trying to study, under fluorescent lighting made everything look dull and depressing. Not the showdown he'd envisioned.
She saw his hesitation as an opening. "This building is full of people, even at this time of night. If some sort of fight were to break out in here, there would be a lot of collateral."
The air turned electric. Amon suddenly perceived how much of a powder keg he had created for himself with this public confrontation. One wrong word, one wrong twitch of his hand around his quinque handle, and the situation would immediately escalate.
"I don't know what I'm going to do yet." He took a moment to empty his racing mind. When he opened his mouth to speak again, even he wasn't completely sure what he was going to say.
They both seemed a little surprised at the words that came out. "Go to the front desk and check out a private study room. I want to talk."
She stared at him, innocent expression disappearing in an instant and replaced with a slow-building fury. "And I wanted to never see you again. We don't always get what we want."
He knew she would make a move to escape any second now. She'd probably break through the window behind them and disappear into the night, possibly forever.
He wasn't sure where this would lead, but he knew the next step was getting answers to a few burning questions. "The longer you talk to me here, the longer I put off figuring out how this ends."
"I'll tell you how this ends, it ends in blood and tears like everything else you touch."
He flinched. Leave it to a teenage girl to zero in on his deepest insecurities. "I could say the same to you." Maybe…his trump card. It was meant to be a failsafe so someone, somewhere, would know what happened to him if he didn't make it through the night, but maybe he could use it in a different way.
"I'm not here on official business. I gave a subordinate an envelope detailing where I am and why I'm here, with orders to deliver it to my partner in—" he checked his watch "—about twenty minutes. Otherwise, no one knows where I am or why, and if I call him to stop the delivery, it can stay that way. But that only happens if you talk."
Her eyebrows went up. "And why should I trust you? Why should I believe you don't have the building surrounded?"
"Even if the building's surrounded, the longer you talk to me in here, the longer you put off that confrontation."
There was a moment of angry silence from her. She slowly picked up her phone. "The only way I agree to this is if you let me send a text. I'm expected somewhere soon anyways, so if no one hears from me you'll have a few of my friends headed this way to check on me. You probably don't want that, do you?"
Without waiting for his ok, she fired off a single text in about five seconds. "You'll just have to trust me that I haven't summoned every single one of my friends in the 20th ward to head this way while we're talking."
He felt for a moment like he had ceded too much control of the situation and he should just get out, but the imminent sense of danger in the atmosphere was diffused. His gut ultimately said to stay.
Her shoulders drooped and she sighed. She was also feeling the lessened tension in the air after their negotiation. "Give me a minute to sign up for a study room."
The girl turned to head for the nearest help desk, but paused to think for a moment. "Leave your…briefcase outside the door or I bolt right now."
"You're bringing a concealed weapon in with you."
"I can't do anything about that. If it makes you feel safer, this is a new sweater and I don't want to ruin it."
