[CCG Tokyo Headquarters — Records Annex | February 2008]
The fluorescent lights hummed a steady, indifferent note over rows of steel cabinets. Paper dust hung in the air like a second weather: dry, fine, and inescapable. Senior Investigator Hoshino stood at a long worktable with his coat off and sleeves rolled, the same way he had stood a hundred times before a hundred different ghosts.
Across from him, Shimizu set a plastic tray of files down and rubbed the bridge of her nose. A healed ridge of scar tissue still ran just under her hairline—old damage from the 19th Ward—almost invisible unless you knew where to look. She knew Hoshino did.
"Pulled everything you asked for," she said. "Fifteenth Ward incidents for the last twenty months. Cross-referenced with descriptors you flagged: 'crimson shards,' 'glass-wing,' 'child-sized male,' 'half-mask, cracked jaw seam.'" She tapped the top folder. "Plenty of noise, but the signal is there."
Hoshino flipped the cover and scanned the first report. Grainy prints, badly lit alley shots, a blur that could have been a boy or a shadow. He set a fingertip to the margin where a patrolman had scrawled: 'Shards like glass—too dense for Ukaku, too fast for Kōkaku.'
He said nothing for a moment. Then, quietly, "Same mask?"
Shimizu slid a photograph free of a paperclip. It showed a smear of blood on brick and, below it, a faint reflection in a puddle: the lower half of a mask, the leather split along the jaw.
"Witness says he saw a kid with a half-mask, right side cracked," she said. "Different night, different ward, same defect. That makes at least three mentions of the crack since 2006."
Hoshino's expression didn't change, but his jaw worked once. "He kept it."
"Kids keep the things that make them feel like someone," Shimizu said, then looked mildly annoyed at herself for saying anything at all.
They worked in silence. He laid the files out by month, then by ward. She made neat columns of shorthand in her notebook: time / location / body count / descriptors / confidence. Every few minutes she would circle a line and slide the page over; Hoshino would skim, grunt, and reposition it.
When the table was crowded with paper islands, Shimizu planted her pencil and spoke.
"Seventeen events that match our hybrid signature. Fifteenth Ward is the loudest cluster—feedings, ghoul-on-ghoul altercations, two human casualties with 'knife-spray' wounds that lab says aren't steel. Four weak matches in the Fourteenth, maybe spillover."
Hoshino tapped a fingernail against a path of red pushpins on the ward map pinned to cork. "Territory lines shift in the 15th. Gangs come and go. A kid could live in the seams."
"A kid with a hybrid kagune," Shimizu said. "You don't see many of those. And the ones we do see, they burn out or get collected by someone worse."
He knew what she meant: Aogiri Tree— He set a file aside and reached for another.
A photo slid free. Night scene. Broken neon reflected in a puddle, footprint ripples around it. In the puddle, the ghost of that same jaw-cracked mask.
Shimizu watched him look. "Sir," she said, gentler than the office called for, "you're thinking of the 19th."
Hoshino grunted. "Thinking of a courtyard where a wall of armor tried to break my spine." He closed the file and set it square to the pile. "Thinking of the child who turned back when he should have run."
"The child with that mask," Shimizu said. "He would be… thirteen? Fourteen?"
"Depending when he was born," Hoshino said. A beat. "Depending how long he lives."
They left that there between them, like a blade neither chose to pick up.
[Operations Bullpen — Midmorning]
A whiteboard took up an entire wall here, all wards of Tokyo sectioned and color-coded. Today the Fifteenth was more red than white. Hoshino stood with a dry-erase marker uncapped and the cap in his teeth. Shimizu propped an elbow on a cabinet and flipped through a stapled stack.
"I still don't like 'A-plus pending S,'" she said. "That's someone else's ambition dressed as caution. He's small. He is violent, yes, but the victims with ghoul physiology suggest targeted predation, not rampage. If we inflate the rank, we inflate the response… and the collateral."
Hoshino wrote BLACK DRAGON in square letters across the 15th and underlined it once. "No one's asking for S."
"Not anymore," Shimizu said. "But it was in two of the early drafts because someone upstairs likes the word 'legend.'"
He clicked the marker cap back on. "Then today we kill the legend and write a report."
She raised a brow. "Classification?"
He studied the red dots, the trendline of months. "A-candidate. We keep him there until he proves he's more."
Shimizu scribbled it. "A-candidate it is." She paused, then added, softer, "It's the right call."
Hoshino didn't answer, which meant he agreed and had moved on. He tapped a blank corner of the board with the marker. "Pattern."
Shimizu angled the stack so they both could see the top three reports at once. "He feeds irregularly. No cadence. Hunger, not hobby. He avoids major intersections and cameras when he can, but he's not a ghost—he leaves noise. That suggests he's not alone; someone's teaching him to be careful, but not perfectly."
"Older ghoul," Hoshino said. "Or a group that doesn't care enough to fully hide him."
"Clan," Shimizu said, and made a face like she wished she hadn't.
They let that hang, too. Clans complicated everything. You didn't raid a nest without losing people. You didn't miss the nest without losing face.
Hoshino capped the marker and tucked it into his breast pocket. "We need eyes, not heroics."
"Surveillance package," Shimizu said. "Plainclothes, long lenses, RC sweepers at two choke points. I'll call Fifteenth Ward Bureau and ask for their best nighttime drivers. We run it quiet for a week."
He made a small noise that meant keep talking.
"We also circulate a narrow BOLO to hospital partners," she continued. "No public advisory. If he's still thirteen or so, a bad night will send him to ground. If he eats wrong, he'll get sick. We capture the aftershock, not the blow."
"Good," Hoshino said. His gaze drifted to the corner of the whiteboard where someone had left a doodle—wings, or maybe knives. He wiped it off with his sleeve. "And the mask."
Shimizu knew what he meant. "We put the cracked jaw seam into the descriptor. Half-mask, right side split. It's unusual enough to matter. Anyone who's seen him will remember that detail."
"People remember fear," Hoshino said. He didn't look at her when he said it.
[Records Annex — Early Afternoon]
They returned to the paper islands. Shimizu built a careful stack of witness statements while Hoshino paged through evidence logs. He found a lab note he'd missed: RC residue at scene elevated, non-human profile present. The analyst had underlined non-human twice and added: stronger than average—possible ghoul vs. ghoul event.
He slid the page to Shimizu.
She frowned. "He's killing ghouls as often as humans."
"Or fighting them," Hoshino said. "Either way, he learns."
They read for another half hour. At one point Shimizu pulled a thin folder from the bottom of her tray and hesitated.
"What," Hoshino said without looking up.
She set it down between them. It was old—July 2005—edged with a coffee ring. 19th Ward After Action stamped in red. Bastion's file.
Shimizu's voice lost its desk brightness. "There's a notation I don't remember seeing before. Photo attachment, destroyed. But the line stayed. 'Secondary subject: juvenile male, approx. 10–11, assisted Bastion, hybrid traits suspected. Half-mask, jaw seam split.'"
Hoshino didn't reach for it. He knew it by heart. "We wrote it that night."
"You wrote it," she said. "I was being stitched."
"Then read the next line," he said.
She did. "Recommendation: juvenile subject is a flight risk. Do not pursue through residential zones. Prioritize Bastion."
They both sat with that. Years hadn't dulled the taste of the call.
Shimizu closed the folder. "We did what we could."
Hoshino set both hands flat on the table and pushed himself upright. "We do what we can now."
[CCG Briefing Room — Late Afternoon]
Four investigators, one map, one projector that never focused right. Shimizu spoke while Hoshino watched the room, which was how they had learned to do this: she caught details, he caught tells.
"Codename Black Dragon," she said, the slide naming him in white letters over a washed-out alley photo. "Hybrid indicators across fifteen months. Subject height at last sighting: one-forty-five to one-fifty centimeters. Build slight. Mask: half, right jawline cracked. Behavior: evasive, but not invisible. Targets: mixed human and ghoul victims, skewing toward ghoul on ghoul conflict in recent months."
A junior investigator raised a tentative hand. "Hybrid as in… cross-type? Or—"
"Hybrid as in traits," Shimizu said. "Projection consistent with Ukaku, impact cratering consistent with Kōkaku. It's not clean. He's messy. But he's learning."
Another voice from the back: "And rank?"
Hoshino answered. "A-candidate. He's not there yet. He's young. Underestimate him and you die. Overestimate him and the city pays for your imagination."
That earned a few grim smiles. It also pinned responsibility where it belonged: on judgment, not legend.
Shimizu clicked to the last slide: ACTION ITEMS.
"Surveillance grid in the Fifteenth for seven nights," she said. "No raids. Plainclothes only. RC sweeps at Tamagawa underpass and East Market Row. Discreet hospital BOLO for adolescent male with lacerations consistent with Rinkaku impact. You see the cracked half-mask, you call it in and you do not play hero."
Someone asked about quinques. Hoshino shook his head. "You bring your standard issue. If we have to escalate, you will know because I will be there."
He didn't say again. He didn't need to.
[Hoshino's Office — Dusk]
The office smelled faintly of old coffee and cleaner. Hoshino stood by the window and watched the smudge of evening drag itself across the city. Shimizu leaned in the doorway with a stack of fresh forms for signatures.
"You think he remembers you?" she asked, not unkindly.
Hoshino watched the traffic lines thread the ring roads. "He remembers a night he ran and a night his father didn't."
"That's not what I asked," she said.
He took the forms and signed them where she'd flagged. "Kids remember masks," he said at last. "And voices."
Shimizu's gaze flicked to the framed photo turned face-down on his shelf. She didn't comment. "We'll keep it quiet, sir. We'll keep it clean."
He nodded once. "We're not there to prove a point. We're there to learn how he moves."
"And if he doesn't show?"
"He always shows," Hoshino said. "Hunger is patient and stupid."
That drew the ghost of a smile from her. "I'll brief the Fifteenth Ward captain tonight."
She turned to go, then paused, looking back. "If it is the same kid… the one from the 19th… he's only what—thirteen?"
"Some things don't wait for eighteen to become dangerous," Hoshino said. He set the signed forms on the desk and picked up his coat. "And some things are dangerous precisely because they're thirteen."
They left the office together, the hallway lights flicking to motion as they passed.
[CCG Garage — Night]
Engines idled; exhaust curled in thin white ropes in the cold air. Plain sedans, no logos, long nights ahead. Shimizu handed a driver a sealed envelope—maps, call signs, the grid. Hoshino checked his watch, then the sky.
He remembered the sound of kakuja plates grinding against concrete. He remembered a boy's silhouette in floodlight turning back when a man ordered him to run. He remembered a mask with a broken jaw seam and a voice that said nothing and meant everything.
He shut the thought in a drawer in his mind and locked it. Doubt got people killed.
Shimizu touched his arm lightly—professional, quick. "We'll get something tonight," she said, like a promise.
"Or the night after," Hoshino said, like a correction that wasn't.
She smiled without teeth. "Or the night after that."
They stepped back as the sedans rolled out into the city, taillights stringing toward the Fifteenth Ward like red beads on a wire.
Somewhere beyond the river, alleys waited, and a boy with a cracked mask threaded them the way a fish threaded current. The CCG would not rush him this time. They would tighten a net made of patience.
And when the first radio cracked to life with a whisper that sounded like glass and wings, Hoshino's hand would already be on the door handle, the map of old streets unfolding in his head as if he had never left them behind at all.