"Allow me to reject that idea."
The words come out of every mouth at once, and the echo multiplies them until it feels like the entire tunnel is speaking.
The ghouls who deployed their kagunes don't know where to aim, and as they look around, their whole bodies begin trembling uncontrollably.
An unknown situation, where they have walked into the belly of a monster. That's the feeling every one of them has.
Run! They have to run! With terror settling into their hearts, their minds aren't capable of thinking about anything except getting out of there.
"Everyone hold still!"
Mirumo's voice cuts through the noise.
"Put your kagunes away. Nobody attacks anything and nobody runs. Nobody!"
The ghouls look at him and behind their masks you can see eyes trembling with fear and confused by Mirumo's words. But in the end they decide to obey, because little by little the kagunes disappear and the tunnel goes quiet again.
"Huf..."
Mirumo breathes deeply.
His heart is pounding against his chest, and there's no point denying it. Because he thought about running too. But there's something far more important than fear right now, and that's that he already understands the situation.
With flesh covering every centimeter of the walls, ceiling and floor, hundreds of eyes watching everything that happens along with mouths full of sharp teeth that look hungry...
If that thing wanted to kill them, they would all already be dead, because there wouldn't have been time even to scream.
Therefore...
"...Chimera."
Mirumo closes his eyes for a second or two, and when he opens them again, he looks straight ahead and speaks in a firm voice.
"I assume it's you."
There is no other being who could give off this nightmarish feeling.
The mouths on the walls all stretch at once, forming something like a smile. A very terrifying smile.
"That's me."
Shuu tenses immediately at hearing the voice admit to being Chimera.
"You..."
"Hey, Shuu. Long time. You look awful, man."
"Shut up!"
"Shuu."
Mirumo raises his hand and his son stops. That said, his shoulders don't stop shaking as he clenches his jaw.
Mirumo looks straight ahead again, at the section of flesh wall where the greatest number of eyes and mouths are gathered. He assumes that must be Chimera's head.
"Before anything else, I want to ask you something."
"Go ahead."
"Our escape was too easy."
"Ah. You noticed."
"Hah... I thought so. Clearing the routes and confusing the CCG squads... You've led us into your nest."
The mouths tremble while producing a loud, shrill sound of laughter coming from every direction.
"Led you into my nest sounds ugly, doesn't it? I opened some doors and closed others, and you walked exactly where I wanted you to walk."
Shortly after those words finish, murmurs rise among the ghouls. Mirumo doesn't stop them, since even though he already expected a similar answer, he still needs a second or two to digest it.
Believing he had made every decision on his own... no. Perhaps to keep himself from exploding with rage, he arrives at a simple conclusion of "I already suspected something was wrong. So this is only confirmation of that suspicion."
Hah...
He lets out a long sigh.
"In other words, then, if you wanted to kill us, you could have done it at any point during those days, and you didn't. Instead you appeared before me."
"Exactly. That saves quite a bit of conversation, doesn't it?"
"Then what is it that you want?"
"I heard what you were telling your people a moment ago. You want to talk to the Aogiri?"
The masses of flesh at the front shift to one side, and the eyes and mouths move with them.
"And that's why I said I reject that idea."
"By what right?"
"None. It's just that if you go to Aogiri, they're going to swallow you, your son and everyone who depends on you."
Shuu grits his teeth at hearing that.
"You already know it, don't you? With Aogiri's influence and strength in the supernatural world, they don't need to negotiate with another group of ghouls. Without money, without property and without a name, they surely won't see you as useful beyond being interested in practicing cannibalism on some of you while using the rest as cannon fodder."
"..."
"Besides, it doesn't suit me. Aogiri is already big enough, and handing them hundreds of ghouls and everything left of the Tsukiyama network would be giving them an enormous gift for nothing."
Mirumo narrows his eyes and speaks.
"Telling me all of that, I doubt you don't have another alternative."
"I have an alternative."
The wall of flesh stops dead, and with a wet sound, every one of the eyes arranged along the walls and ceiling fixes on each ghoul in that tunnel.
"It's called Doom."
Chimera's words hit the silence. Probably nobody has heard that name before in their life.
"Doom?"
"My organization. For now it's an empty name, I won't lie to you. If you join, you'd be the first group to enter."
"And why is it called that?"
"Because I liked how it sounded."
"..."
"What? Were you expecting a tragic story behind the name?"
Mirumo stays quiet for a second or two, and only after focusing on one of the eyes does he speak.
"Explain the proposal to me."
"Fine. It's simple."
Wall of flesh distorts, stretches out and forms a hand of flesh identical in shape to a human hand. That hand raises one finger.
"One. The Tsukiyama join Doom. All of you, including the ghouls who work for you and don't carry the name."
It raises a second finger.
"Two. I am the highest authority. When I give an order, that order is carried out. There's no discussion about that."
A third finger.
"Three. You continue managing your people."
Mirumo expected the first two points, because that's what anyone would find joining an organization by force. But at the third point, he raises his eyebrows.
"What?"
"I have not the slightest interest in managing hundreds of ghouls. I also don't want to handle businesses, or properties, or accounts, or decide who sleeps where, or settle fights between people I don't know. I'd rather have the Longinus driven into my heart than go through paperwork."
"..."
"So you obey me, and they obey you."
Hundreds of thoughts cross Mirumo's head at once. A monster who has just destroyed his entire family could have demanded everything, and that's what he was expecting to happen. If he had joined Aogiri, that would have been the expected result.
Instead, Chimera is handing him back half the control over his own people.
But...
"I'm going to ask you some questions."
Precisely because of that, he can't let his guard down.
"Really? More questions? Fine, ask them."
"What do we get in return?"
The distorted voices ring out through the tunnel again.
"Territory where you can live without having to sleep in the sewers. Resources. Protection from the CCG, which is the important part, because right now the CCG believes Chimera is a Tsukiyama and will keep hunting you. And protection from other ghouls, Aogiri included."
"And our properties? Our businesses?"
"Heh... Don't worry too much about properties and businesses. Because before long they'll stop mattering."
The mustached man adjusts the glasses on his nose and creases his brow.
"What do you mean?"
"Everything you need to know, I've already told you."
"Fine. As for autonomy..."
"As long as it doesn't go against Doom, do whatever you want."
"And if someone in my family disobeys?"
"I'll handle it."
Without changing tone, the mouths speak those simple, sincere words. Perhaps that's exactly why Mirumo's back goes cold.
"Last question. I want an honest answer."
"Mm."
"What guarantee do I have that you won't kill us the moment we stop being useful to you?"
The mass of flesh moves as if tilting its head.
"None."
"Huh?"
"I'm not going to invent a pretty guarantee for you. If I wanted to kill you, I would, and there's nothing you could do about it. The only thing I can tell you is that killing you now does nothing for me, and having you alive and working does. I only kill when someone comes after me or after mine."
A pause.
"And that brings me to the one non-negotiable condition."
Right after, the acrid smell of the filthy water changes into something bloody and heavy, while the air in the tunnel seems to thicken enough to make breathing difficult.
The eyes on the walls all stop moving at the same time, and every one of them turns toward the same point.
Toward Shuu.
"None of you go near my people."
"..."
"And when I say my people, I mean everyone who matters to me. You don't need to know their names or their faces, because you're never going to get close enough to see them."
A mass of flesh stretches out until it's right in front of Shuu, and hundreds of small eyes fix on him, while the mouths open and close centimeters from his nose.
"If anyone looks at them wrong, if anyone follows them, if anyone mentions them in a conversation with the wrong intent, I'm not going to ask who it was, or investigate, or punish that person."
The mouths smile.
"I will erase the Tsukiyama family from the world. Every single one of you."
Shuu's mouth opens slightly, but he can't find any words to say.
Hundreds of other masses of flesh stretch out, and in the blink of an eye, position themselves in front of the face of every ghoul present.
"And whoever breaks the rules won't find peace even in death."
Caught off guard, some ghouls fall backward.
"Understood?"
Shuu manages to say a single word.
"...Yes."
"Good."
The smell of blood disappears along with the pressure in the air, and the masses of flesh retract until they merge back into the wall.
A few seconds later, Shuu manages to react.
"Father, you can't be considering joining him!"
"Shuu."
The man looks at his son without words. He had said "yes" a moment ago, but now his fury is written across his face.
"This monster destroyed everything! Everything our family built! And now he wants us to kneel before him?!"
Other ghouls take Shuu's complaints as an opening to shout similar things, arguing against joining someone who destroyed them.
"Shuu."
"It's humiliating! I'd rather...!"
From Mirumo's point of view, Shuu looks like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum.
"Son."
With a sigh, he speaks quietly, and for some reason that works better than shouting, because Shuu goes silent.
"You're right. He destroyed everything."
"Then..."
"But you also have to say the other part."
Mirumo looks at him from beneath his glasses.
"You went after him for years. When a man warns you and draws a line, and you keep going until you cross that line, then you don't get to complain about the consequences. And you, being my son, did it with the family name on your shoulders."
Shuu lowers his head.
"However."
Mirumo puts a hand on his son's shoulder.
"I knew. I knew exactly what you were doing and who you were doing it against. And I didn't stop you."
"Father..."
"And I didn't stop you because part of me wanted the same thing you wanted. So no, the fault isn't yours. It belongs to both of us."
Shuu looks at him with wide eyes, his pupils trembling.
Mirumo lets go of his son's shoulder and stays still for a long moment while he thinks.
He has three paths.
The first is to fight. The result would be that everyone in this tunnel dies in less than a minute.
'Discarded.'
The second is to hide and depend on Aogiri. His people would survive for a while, and after that they would stop being his people. He'd lose them either way.
'Discarded!'
The third is to bow. He would lose his pride, and he would keep hundreds of people, along with his own life and his son's.
There really isn't much to think about.
Mirumo raises his head.
"Chimera."
"Tell me."
"If the alternative is dying here with my pride intact, or bowing to you and guaranteeing that my people are still alive tomorrow..."
He brings his right hand to his chest.
"...then I have no doubt at all about which of the two to choose."
And he bows deeply.
"The Tsukiyama family places itself under your command."
The tunnel goes silent.
Then one of the ghouls standing behind bows, followed shortly after by another. Seeing this, little by little the ghouls bow one after another until, a few seconds later, hundreds of hooded silhouettes are lowering their heads in the darkness.
While it's true that some look humiliated, others relieved, and others don't trust a monster's word, most of them understand that following Mirumo in this case is the right thing to do.
Shuu clenches his fists, closes his eyes, and finally bows too.
×××
Hmm.
While I look at hundreds of people lowering their heads in front of me in a sewer, I think...
'Well, this was easy.'
I had about four different plans prepared for today. Half of them involved violence against someone, but none of them were necessary, which makes me happy. I only had to talk for ten minutes with a mustachioed man who turned out to be considerably smarter than his son.
So now I have hundreds of subordinates, huh?
Umu. Perfect.
I make the eyes on the flesh walls turn toward all of them and speak.
"Straighten up. I don't like talking to people who are looking at the floor."
Little by little they straighten their backs.
Mirumo is the last one to straighten, and he looks at me expecting something. I suppose he's expecting a speech, or some kind of solemn ceremony.
Sorry, mustache guy. I don't have any of that prepared.
"Welcome to Doom."
×××
You can read advanced chapters on my P@treon
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