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The Manager jolted awake from a nightmare, his eyes snapping open. His consciousness was still mired in the entanglement of the dream until a soft call by his ear slowly dragged him back to reality.
"Manager, Manager... you're finally awake."
Ken Kaneki let out a long sigh of relief. When he had seen Kael dragging the legendary SSS-Rank Ghoul back earlier, his heart had almost stopped from fright, thinking the old man had already been zeroed.
"Kaneki... you're alright."
Yoshimura looked at him with relief. At least the worst hadn't happened; as long as the hardware was still running, there was a chance for a system restore. He looked down to assess his current status. His hands and feet were tightly bound, his body confined to a reinforced medical bed board.
A restraint like this shouldn't have been able to hold the One-Eyed Owl, but the Kakuho in his body refused to respond to his will, as if it had been forced into a deep hibernation. He was currently just a somewhat fit old man. The feeling of powerlessness was a critical system error he couldn't bypass.
"I'm fine, just... a bit anemic," Kaneki said sheepishly. His face was pale, but his "operating system" seemed stable.
"Where is Touka?" Yoshimura asked, his anxiety spiking.
"She's fine too, it's just..." Kaneki hesitated.
At that moment, Touka Kirishima walked in, answering the question visually. Yoshimura's eyes widened. He squeezed them shut and opened them again, confirming he wasn't hallucinating. Touka was wearing a black-and-white maid outfit, her slender legs wrapped in white stockings, appearing both pure and deeply humiliated.
"Manager..." Touka tugged at the lace of her skirt, her face a vivid scarlet.
"It must be hard for you, child," Yoshimura whispered. He knew her personality; she would have rather faced a firing squad than put on that outfit.
"Actually, it's alright," Touka lied, her voice cracking.
That damn Investigator had made the outfit a prerequisite for her limited freedom. She'd held out until her "biological waste management" system hit critical levels; she simply couldn't wait any longer.
"Hey, hey, hey, I just had you change your clothes. I didn't touch your internal components," Kael said, knocking on the door with a smirk.
"This is between us, Kael. It has nothing to do with the Manager," Touka snapped.
"It originally didn't," Kael replied, pulling out a syringe the size of a forearm. Kaneki visibly shuddered, his "PTSD" sensors redlining. "But the moment he tried to 'zero' me on your behalf, the variables changed."
"Take my blood instead," Touka stepped forward, rolling up her sleeve.
Kael brushed her aside. "What value does an underdeveloped Ukaku like you have compared to the legendary Owl?"
"SSS-Rank?" Touka stared at the Manager in shock.
"It's alright, Touka. It's just a sample," Yoshimura said comfortingly, though the massive Rc-cell suppression made his blood regeneration feel like a dial-up connection.
"Investigator, what is your endgame?" the Manager asked.
"Just call me Kael," he replied, storing the warm vial. "Ghouls consume humans to maintain Rc activity. But biologically, this doesn't fit natural evolution. Human and Ghoul DNA have a 99% match. Such a massive predatory shift shouldn't have happened naturally."
The three captives listened, momentarily forgetting their status as "lab rats."
"Humans have Rc cells too," Kael continued. "If we overclock a human's Rc concentration, what happens? Kaneki, you're the proof-of-concept. In most cases, the system crashes and the human dies. But you survived."
"So... what does that prove?" Touka asked.
"Ghouls are a divergent branch of humanity," Kael summarized. "A path tainted with 'Original Sin'—likely born from large-scale cannibalism in the ancient Middle East. You aren't a different species; you're a version of humanity with a massive genetic bug."
"Then how do we patch it?" Kaneki asked urgently. He was the one who most wanted to "roll back" to a human state.
"Simple. Another thousand years of evolution might self-correct it. But I don't have that kind of patience," Kael said. "I'm initiating a manual system override. I'm going to solve the cannibalism bug myself."
Touka's resistance dissipated. Her perception of Kael underwent a 180-degree turn, though she still felt the maid outfit was an unnecessary "mod."
"Try this," Kael said, offering Touka a lollipop.
"Why should I? I can't taste sugar," she huffed.
"To prove my 'patch' works," Kael said, his Calculating Survivor charisma making it impossible to refuse.
Touka popped the candy into her mouth. The faint sweetness hit her tongue like a burst of light. She froze. Is this... sugar? Kael scribbled in his notebook. The Rc-Inhibitor he had developed using Biotechnica and Kanou's data didn't just suppress cells; it put them into a deep sleep, allowing the body's human organs to function normally.
"Can I have one?" Kaneki asked eagerly.
"Useless for you," Kael waved him off. "You were injected with the legacy version. Only Touka gets the high-end updates for now."
Kaneki slumped. He had realized Kael had a serious "Gender Bias" in his research subjects.
As Kael left the room, the Manager watched him silently. He felt a rare sense of anticipation. What truly made him submit wasn't Kael's ideology—he wasn't as naive as Touka—it was Kael's matchless power. With that kind of torque, he could actually enforce his philosophy on the world.
Meanwhile, back at Anteiku, the situation was redlining. Without the Manager to keep the peace, the "Black Dobers" and the "Enma" were minutes away from an internal war. The powder keg was about to blow.
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