But the relief didn't last long.
"We need to go," Predator hissed in my mind, its voice edged with both fear and aggression.
"If you won't let me out, then we have to leave. I can't stand the bloodlust being aimed at us and not be ready. Either we walk out now, or I come out right here. Every second you force me to stay inside is another risk I refuse to take."
It had a point. I could feel it too — that heavy, instinctive warning thrumming beneath my skin.I wanted to stay. I needed more of whatever was keeping that hunger at bay. But holding Predator back was draining every ounce of willpower I had.
I set some money on the table, grabbed my coffee, and stood up. As I glanced back, I caught the purple-haired women shift her gaze from me to someone else — a black-haired guy sitting across from a blond student. My gut twisted in recognition. A ghoul staring at a human. A hunter eyeing prey.
I couldn't do anything. Not now.
I walked out into the afternoon air. I hadn't been to campus in days, and I couldn't afford to miss more — not without drawing suspicion.
"Better now?" I muttered.
"No. I don't like being threatened and not being ready."
"I don't think she would've done anything. The moment a ghoul gets exposed in public, they're hunted by the CCG."I sighed. "Guess we have that in common now."
Kami University wasn't far. I'd chosen it because the grant covered my living expenses… and because Hina and I both got accepted.Weird. I felt numb even thinking about her. Maybe Predator was influencing that too.
Didn't matter. The entrance was up ahead.
"Listen — when we get inside, don't talk to me out loud. If people see me chatting with myself, they'll think I've snapped. Just talk in my head."
"I'm still hungry. We need to eat. Soon."
"We're not eating anyone."
A pause.
"…Can we eat ghouls?"
The question echoed in my skull like a dropped stone.
I stumbled over a crack in the pavement, catching myself as a few students passed by giving me odd glances.
Can we eat ghouls?
The question hung in the air between my ears, silent and yet deafening. Can we eat ghouls??
I stumbled, my foot catching on an uneven crack in the pavement. A few students heading the other way shot me a weird look. I righted myself, muttering a half-hearted apology and kept walking, my heart hammering against my ribs for a reason that had nothing to do with exertion.
"Did you just ask that?" I thought, the words a frantic whisper in my own mind.
" We need food," Predator's voice responded, utterly calm, analytical. "The last one we ate tasted good, made us stronger. we can keep getting stronger. They are a viable food source. so which can we eat... ghouls or humans?"
I felt sick. Not the gnawing, hollow sickness of hunger, but a deep, cold revulsion that settled in my gut like ice. "They're not… they're not just food. They're people. Kind of."
"People?" The voice in my head let out a low, rumbling chuckle that vibrated through my skull. "The one in the alley did not seem to think the woman he was eating was 'people.' He saw her as food. We see them as food. It is the nature of things. eat or be eaten. There is no morality in it."
I pushed through the main gates of Kami University, the familiar sight of the campus doing nothing to calm my nerves. The wide plaza, the library building, the throngs of students laughing and talking—it all felt like a scene from another life. A life where the biggest problem was a cheating girlfriend, not an alien voice in my head asking if it was okay to cannibalize monsters.
"I'm not eating anyone ever again," I stated firmly, my jaw tight. "We're not doing that. We'll find out why the coffee helps. We'll figure something else out."
"a temporary fix," Predator countered, a hint of impatience in its tone. "A snack, it is not enough for us!. I will get hungry, we will get hungry. And when it becomes unbearable, your quaint little moralities will seem not to matter in the slightest, we know this."
I wanted to argue, but I couldn't. I remembered the alley. I remembered the absolute, all-consuming need that had overwhelmed me, the way my own body had moved with a terrifying, instinctual purpose. Predator was right. When the hunger got that bad, I wasn't sure I could stop myself from eating anything, let alone make a distinction between what's right and what Is wrong.
My first class was Intro to Philosophy. A lecture hall. Anonymous. Safe. Or so I thought.
As I found a seat near the back of the lecture hall, the world came alive in a way it never had before. It wasn't the rich, intoxicating aroma of a ghoul that hit me, but a thousand different threads of life, all woven together into a suffocating tapestry. The air was thick with it. The girl in front of me smelled of cherry blossom shampoo and the faint, sweet tang of her anxiety, a scent like overripe fruit. The guy two rows down carried the sharp, metallic tang of a fresh cut on his knuckle mixed with the sour stench of his sweat and cheap cologne. It was overwhelming. A symphony of scents that my brain was suddenly equipped to understand, each person a unique, enticing aroma of the pheromones they naturally gave off.
"mmmm, either of these humans will do can we just have one?, Predator whispered, its voice a low hum of satisfaction. "NO." i muttered under my breath as not to draw attention or make a sound. "just be quiet. heres an idea, since you like controlling me how about you do something about my sense of smell. I can't stand it." for moment there was slience in my head then. " no, as we get hungrier our senses will just grow...we....need..to..eat!"
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to focus on the droning voice of the professor at the front of the hall. Something about Kant. About categorical imperatives. The idea that you should act only according to principles you could will to be a universal law.
"Boring," Predator hissed in my skull, a spike of irritation cutting through my concentration. "All this talk of 'principles.' It's weakness. A lie they tell themselves to feel safe. There is only one principle: the strong take from the weak. That is the only universal law."
"Will you shut up?" I thought back, my hands clenching into fists under the desk. as i lifted my fist from under and placed it on the desk i could feel the desk begin to crack slighty. Immediatly lifted my hand up. " that couldn't have been me?" I thought. " I barely applied any force." I just wish i was normal again. I just wanted it to be quiet.
Just then, the lecture hall door at the back creaked open. A student slipped in late, trying to be inconspicuous.
The moment the door opened, a new scent slammed into me. It was different from the Classmates around me. Sharper. Clean, but with a more tangish, bloody undertone that cut through the muddle of other aromas like a knife. It was the scent of a hunter.
Ghoul.
Predator went silent — deadly silent. in my head, and a cold, washed over me. I didn't have to look. I didn't want to look.
But I could feel it. The new student's head snapped in my direction, his gaze piercing. He had smelled me, too. Or rather, he'd smelled something. Something wrong. Something other. I could feel his eyes on me, questioning, territorial.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I fought every instinct screaming at me to look, to assess the threat. Instead, I forced my head down, pretending to be utterly engrossed in my notebook, my hand scribbling nonsense. I focused on the professor's voice, on the feel of the pen in my hand, on anything but the creature standing at the back of the room.
Don't look. Don't react. You're just another bored student. You're invisible.
The tension stretched for an eternity. Then, I heard the faint shuffle of feet as he moved. He took a seat several rows away, but I could still feel his attention towards my direction, a physical weight on the back of my neck. He was uncertain now. He'd caught a whiff of something monstrous, but he'd seen nothing but a slouching student and I was on the end of the row so there was other poeple next to me. The uncertainty was my only shield.
I didn't dare breathe a sigh of relief. I just kept my head down, a predator hiding in plain sight, sitting in a room full of prey, like two lions in the same territory trying to assess one another before attacking.
The lecture was a blur. I couldn't focus. Every cough, every rustle of a notebook, every shifting body in a seat sent a new wave of scent information crashing over me. The hunger was a low, steady thrum beneath it all, a constant reminder of the bomb ticking away inside me.
Class ended. I stumbled out into the crowded hallway, disoriented. I needed to get to my next class, I needed to be normal but I felt like I was drowning.
Then I saw them.
Yamoto and Kiari.
They were standing by a bank of lockers, laughing. He had his arm around her, his hand resting on her hip in a way that used to be mine. She was leaning into him, her head on his shoulder, looking happy.
The pain I expected to feel—the sharp, stabbing agony of betrayal—wasn't there. There was only a dull, distant ache, like remembering a scar from a wound that had long since healed.
But only for a moment… cause no amount of influence could hold down such powerful feelings.
I wasn't craving for their flesh. It was something else. Something darker. It was a primal, furious urge to unmake them. To tear the smile from Yamoto's face and the blissful ignorance from hers. Make her feel every bit of pain I felt a thousand times over! Make him regret, ever taking one look at what was mine. make him regret ever crossing me. me him regret ever being born!
My hands began to shake. Black tendrils, thin and wispy, started to crawl over my knuckles, shimmering just beneath the surface of my skin.
"Easy," Predator murmured, its voice a low growl of anticipation. "They are weak. Fragile. It would be so easy."
"No," I gritted out, forcing the word through clenched teeth. I shoved my hands into my pockets, hiding the monstrous transformation. I turned away, my back to them, and started walking blindly down the hall.
"Such a shame," Predator whispered, a note of mock disappointment in its voice. "All that rage. All that pain. I could make it go away if you want. I can take away the ache."
I didn't answer. I just kept walking, my long strides eating up the distance, leaving them and their perfect little world behind me.
I didn't go to my next class.
I found the nearest men's room and locked myself in a stall, sliding down to sit on the cold tile floor. I was shaking, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
"I can't take this, it's one Problem after a fucking another!!," I panted, my head in my hands.
"The problem is your refusal to accept what we are," Predator said, its voice sharp, cutting. I could feel predator emerging from my back, his face forming in front of me like a snake connected to my body. "You cling to your old life, your old feelings. your old habits. We are MORE ."
"Seeing them… it almost made me lose control," I admitted, the confession tasting like ash in my mouth.
"we, almost lost, control" predator said. " we don't need to be hiding, we don't need to be afraid. we can be so much more. " as it spoke i could feel something inside like. the feeling when you get a hug or comfort? "but first you know what we need to do."
I leaned my head back against the metal door of the stall, the cold surface a small anchor in the storm of my own mind. It was right. The coffee was a bandage on a gaping wound. The hunger was only getting worse. I couldn't go on like this.
"So what do we do?" I asked, the words barely a whisper. "Where do we find… food that won't get us hunted?"
For a long moment, Predator was silent. I could feel it thinking, sifting through my memories, my knowledge of the city, piecing things together with an intelligence that was not my own.
"There are places," it finally said, its voice low and thoughtful. "Places where ghouls hunt. Places where they dispose of their own. Where the CCG does not often patrol."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the tile floor. "You mean… ghoul feeding grounds?"
"yes," it replied.
The idea was insane. Suicidal. Isn't it? It was like a mouse volunteering to be dinner in a snake pit.
But as I sat there in the silence of the bathroom, the hunger a relentless, gnawing fire in my gut, I was reminded yet again. Im not just human anymore and maybe I should stop pretending to be.
"Okay," I thought, my voice hollow. "We'll do it. We'll go hunting."
A wave of dark, triumphant satisfaction washed over me, and I knew it wasn't my own.
"Good," Predator purred.