CCG Headquarters — Six Days Later
The conference room was cold in the way bureaucratic places always were — all metal edges, filtered air, and silence sharpened by fluorescent lights.
Akira Mado stood before the board.
Behind her: maps of the 20th Ward, graphs of RC anomalies, photographs of frozen corpses, and an open case file marked Draugr Subject 03.
Across from her, arms folded like a barrier, stood Koutarou Amon.
The Director didn't look up from his notes.
"Mado. You've requested to continue your work with the Draugr. Fine.But you'll do it under supervision."
Akira didn't blink.
"Understood."
The Director tapped a file. "Effective immediately, you'll be reassigned."
A beat.
"To work under Amon."
Amon straightened slightly. "That wasn't in my request."
The Director's eyes flicked up.
"It wasn't a request."
Akira gave Amon a glance — flat, unreadable — and turned.
Without a word, she walked out of the room.
Amon followed her down the hall, boots echoing off polished stone.
Only once they were alone did he speak.
"You care about him."
"I care about the outcome," she replied.
"That wasn't an answer."
Akira paused. For a moment, something flickered in her eyes.
"You think I'm compromised?"
Amon's voice was calm. Low.
"I think you're choosing something. I just don't know what."
She said nothing.
She didn't have to.
In the snow-covered clearing beneath the pines, Eiríkur stood with bare arms and frost rising from his skin. His breath came slow, steady. The runes along his shoulders pulsed like buried heartbeats beneath the ice.
He hadn't seen Akira in six days.
He hadn't expected to.
He didn't expect Touka, either.
She arrived quietly — no sound but the crunch of snow. Hood up, scarf tight around her face. Her eyes were harder than before, but not angry. Just bracing for truth.
"I came because he asked," she said.
"Yoshimura," Eiríkur guessed.
Touka nodded, then held out a sealed envelope.
"He said if you still remember who you were, you'll care about what's coming."
Eiríkur opened the letter.
Yoshimura's handwriting was calm. Measured. Like his voice had always been.
Yannis,
The CCG is watching Anteiku.
They suspect we're sheltering hybrids.They're not wrong.
If they find Hinami, or Kaneki, or any of us…you know what they'll do.
If you still believe in the man who sat at my window and drank coffee in silence —not a monster, not a god — then return.
Not as a weapon.
But as yourself.
— Yoshimura
Eiríkur stood still for a long time, letter in hand.
The wyrd in his blood said run.The man he'd once been said go back.
"You still think I'm him?" he asked quietly.
Touka didn't answer right away.
"I don't know what you are anymore," she said.
"But you came."
She met his eyes — sharp, but not cruel. "Because we still are. Kaneki. Hinami. Even me. We're trying to hold something together. If it breaks… there won't be another chance."
He looked to the mountains — to the sky above them, pale with snowlight.
"I'm being watched. I can't move freely."
Touka smirked, just barely.
"Then move fast."
Meanwhile: Amon's Investigation
In his quiet apartment, Amon sat alone with Akira's report, reading it for the third time.
The notes were perfect.
Clinical.
Precise.
And just a little… personal.
She had chronicled Eiríkur's abilities, catalogued the RC shifts, described the behavioral instability — all with exacting objectivity.
And yet, never once did she refer to him as a subject.
Not as a monster.
Not as a threat.
Not even as a partner.
Just him.
That absence troubled Amon more than anything.
Because he recognized it.
He had seen it once, long ago — in the eyes of Kureo Mado. The way her father had spoken of ghouls. Not as cases, or enemies, but as obsessions.
And obsession always led to collapse.