Nashiro worried about whether she'd been snoring, whether she'd looked ugly while sleeping.
Kurona's reaction was even more intense. "Nashiro, I didn't do anything embarrassing, did I?"
"I don't know either, because I... also fell asleep on him by accident..."
Nashiro's voice carried a trace of awkwardness.
"You too..."
Kurona froze for a moment. "I see..."
...
When Byakuya returned home, he found the front door closed but unlocked.
His first thought wasn't of burglars or anything like that—it was of a certain woman.
Opening the door, he spotted a pair of Rize's pink high heels. Sure enough, she was here.
No wonder she'd asked for a spare key—this way she could come and go as she pleased.
"I'm home."
Byakuya announced.
"Darling, welcome back~"
Rize's voice drifted from the living room.
"If I hadn't given you that spare key, I'd almost think someone had broken in."
Byakuya remarked dryly.
"How rude, calling me a burglar."
Rize's tone turned faintly aggrieved.
"I said almost. So, are you planning to stay overnight again?"
Byakuya asked.
"Yes. Unless that's a problem?"
Rize replied directly.
"Of course not. Whatever makes you happy."
Byakuya's tone was calm.
Just then, Rize rose from the sofa and approached him. He didn't need to guess what she was about to do.
Sure enough, Rize proceeded to smell every inch of him from head to toe.
This time she was far more thorough, giving Byakuya a vaguely ominous feeling.
"Mixed with all sorts of ghoul scents again. But there's human scent too, and... the faint fragrance of girls..."
Rize detected numerous scents—her sense of smell was far sharper than most ghouls.
Last time she hadn't been so meticulous. This time she left no stone unturned.
Especially when she caught the feminine scent, a subtle shift appeared in her eyes.
"Your nose is something else..."
Byakuya couldn't help but comment.
"Seems like more than one girl, too. Two scents are particularly distinct."
Rize "analyzed" the scents on him, even deducing that he'd been in relatively close contact with Kurona and Nashiro.
"Also, where exactly did you go? Why do you smell like those people?"
Her gaze shifted again, expression turning noticeably more serious.
She'd been focused on the other women's scents, but now something far more concerning had emerged.
"Those people" she mentioned were the half-humans from Squad Zero.
Due to her low status within the Washuu Clan, Rize had grown up in the Sunlit Garden alongside half-humans from the clan's branch families.
Ordinary ghouls couldn't distinguish between regular humans and half-humans. But having lived among half-humans since childhood, Rize could detect the subtle difference.
The fundamental distinction between humans and half-humans was their RC cell count—not something normally detectable by smell. Only someone like Rize, who'd spent her formative years around half-humans, could barely manage it.
Most importantly, those half-humans were nothing but Washuu lapdogs in Rize's eyes—spending their entire lives serving the clan.
The fact that Byakuya had been in contact with them concerned her greatly.
"What do you mean by 'those people'?"
Byakuya continued feigning ignorance.
"...Actually, you probably wouldn't know about that. So where did you go today?"
Rize speculated: "Or are you... actually a CCG investigator?"
If Byakuya didn't know about half-humans, then he'd probably encountered them through the CCG.
She knew some half-humans were sent by the Washuu Clan to bolster CCG combat strength.
"Not quite. I'm not an official investigator yet—still just an intern."
Since Rize had already figured most of it out, Byakuya saw no point in hiding it.
He could feel that Rize's wariness toward him had gradually diminished from when they first met. So he was willing to share more with her.
"That explains it..."
Now Rize understood.
Whether Byakuya was an intern or full investigator, working at the CCG meant inevitable encounters with investigators whose true identities were Sunlit Garden half-humans.
"But with your abilities, you're still just an intern?"
Rize found this surprising.
"Can't help it. I only recently decided to become a CCG investigator."
Byakuya shrugged.
"Now that you're becoming an investigator, isn't harboring me a serious crime under that Countermeasures Law?"
Rize smiled.
"So what? That law is a joke anyway."
Byakuya spoke bluntly.
The Washuu Clan—who'd both enacted the Ghoul Countermeasures Law and founded the CCG—was itself a ghoul family. Just that fact alone was laughable enough...
Setting that aside, few investigators fully complied with the law anyway.
Byakuya's directness surprised Rize. "If someone else heard you say that and reported you, you'd be in serious trouble."
By "someone else" she meant humans. As a ghoul, she certainly wouldn't report Byakuya.
"That's why I only say these things to you."
Byakuya said quietly.
Rize smiled softly. Then she redirected the conversation: "So all those ghoul scents on you—that's because you were fighting ghouls with other investigators? No wonder there's also a slightly different scent, similar to the Quinques those investigators carry."
"That's right. This thing here."
Byakuya nodded slightly, pulling out the Hiruko 1/76 that he'd kept in his inner pocket.
"That much I understand now, but..."
A subtly dangerous smile appeared on Rize's face. "What about those two girls' scents? Care to explain?"