The scent of other girls

Nashiro Yasuhisa worried about whether she had snored just now and whether she had looked ugly in her sleep.

Kurona Yasuhisa reacted even more strongly than Nashiro, however. She couldn't help asking, "Nashiro, I didn't embarrass myself just now, did I?"

"I'm not sure either, because I also... just like you, I accidentally fell asleep against him..."

Nashiro Yasuhisa sounded slightly embarrassed.

"You too..."

Kurona Yasuhisa froze for a moment. "All right..."

When Amahane Byakuya returned home, he found that his front door was closed but unlocked.

His first thought wasn't of a burglar, but of that woman.

He opened the door and saw a pair of Rize Kamishiro's pink heels. Sure enough, Rize Kamishiro had come over.

No wonder Rize Kamishiro had asked him for a spare key. It made it easy for her to visit Amahane Byakuya's home whenever she wanted.

"I'm home."

Amahane Byakuya called out.

"Welcome home, darling~"

Rize Kamishiro's voice immediately came from the living room.

"If I hadn't given you a spare key, I'd almost have thought a burglar had broken in."

Amahane Byakuya quipped.

"That's a little mean, calling me a burglar."

Rize Kamishiro immediately sounded aggrieved.

"I only said I almost thought that. Anyway, are you planning to stay the night at my place again?"

Amahane Byakuya asked.

"Yes. Or is that not allowed?"

Rize Kamishiro said frankly.

"Of course it is. As long as you're happy."

Amahane Byakuya replied calmly.

Just then, Rize Kamishiro got up from the sofa and walked toward Amahane Byakuya. He didn't even need to think to know what she intended to do next.

Sure enough, Rize Kamishiro proceeded to sniff Amahane Byakuya from head to toe.

The thoroughness of her sniffing this time immediately gave Amahane Byakuya a slightly ominous feeling.

"You're covered in the scents of all sorts of ghouls again, but there are human scents too, and... the faint fragrance of girls..."

Rize Kamishiro picked up many different scents. Her sense of smell was far stronger than that of an ordinary ghoul.

She hadn't sniffed him this carefully last time. This time, she couldn't have been more thorough.

Rize Kamishiro couldn't help taking particular notice of the women's scents, and her gaze immediately changed in a subtle way.

"Your nose is a little too sharp..."

Amahane Byakuya couldn't help quipping.

"It doesn't seem to be just one girl, either. Two scents are particularly noticeable."

Rize Kamishiro "analyzed" the scents on Amahane Byakuya, even working out that he had spent more time in contact with Kurona Yasuhisa and Nashiro Yasuhisa.

"Also, where exactly did you go? Why do you have those people's scents on you?"

At that moment, Rize Kamishiro's gaze changed again, and her expression instantly grew more serious.

She had been bothered by the scents of other women on Amahane Byakuya, but now she seemed to have forgotten about them entirely. Something far more concerning had come up.

By "those people," she actually meant the half-humans in Zero Squad.

Because of her low status in the Washuu Clan, Rize Kamishiro had grown up in the White Day Garden alongside half-humans from the clan's various branch families.

An ordinary ghoul certainly wouldn't have been able to distinguish normal humans from half-humans. But since she had lived with those half-humans since childhood, she could detect the subtle differences between them.

The most fundamental difference between humans and half-humans was the level of RC cells in their bodies, but that wasn't something one could readily distinguish by smell. Only someone like Rize Kamishiro, who had grown up around half-humans, could barely manage it.

Most importantly, in Rize Kamishiro's eyes, those half-humans were nothing more than the Washuu Clan's lackeys, serving the clan their entire lives.

That was why Amahane Byakuya's contact with those half-humans troubled her so much.

"Who do you mean by 'those people'?"

Amahane Byakuya continued pretending he knew nothing.

"...Then again, you probably don't know about any of that. So what exactly were you doing today?"

Rize Kamishiro ventured a guess. "Or... were you a ghoul investigator with the CCG all along?"

If Amahane Byakuya didn't know about half-humans, he must have come into contact with them at the CCG.

She knew the Washuu Clan sent some half-humans to the CCG to bolster the investigators' fighting strength.

"Not quite. I'm not an official ghoul investigator yet. I'm still a trainee."

Since Rize Kamishiro had already guessed most of it, Amahane Byakuya stopped hiding it.

He could gradually sense that Rize Kamishiro wasn't nearly as distant toward him as she had been at first, so he was willing to tell her a few things as well.

"No wonder..."

Now Rize Kamishiro understood.

Whether Amahane Byakuya was a trainee or an official ghoul investigator, he was bound to encounter investigators at the CCG whose true identities were half-humans from the White Day Garden.

"But with your strength, you're still only a trainee?"

Rize Kamishiro was somewhat surprised by that.

"Can't be helped. I only just decided I wanted to become a CCG investigator."

Amahane Byakuya spread his hands.

"If you're going to become a ghoul investigator, aren't you harboring a ghoul by keeping me here? You know that's a serious crime under that countermeasures act or whatever, right?"

Rize Kamishiro said with a smile.

"So what? The 'Ghoul Countermeasures Act' is a joke to begin with."

Amahane Byakuya said bluntly.

The Washuu Clan had enacted the "Ghoul Countermeasures Act" and founded the CCG, yet it was itself a clan of ghouls. That alone was enough of a joke...

Even setting that aside, there weren't many ghoul investigators who could fully abide by the "Ghoul Countermeasures Act" in the first place.

Amahane Byakuya's bluntness surprised Rize Kamishiro somewhat. "If someone heard you saying that and reported you, you'd be in serious trouble."

By "someone," she meant a human. As a ghoul herself, Rize Kamishiro naturally wouldn't report Amahane Byakuya.

"That's why I'd only say these things to you."

Amahane Byakuya said mildly.

Rize Kamishiro gave a soft smile, then returned to the previous topic. "So you're carrying all those ghoul scents because you went out fighting them with other investigators. No wonder there's another slightly different scent on you too. It's like the 'Quinques' carried by investigators I've encountered before."

"That's right. It's this."

Amahane Byakuya nodded slightly and took out the "Hiruko 1/76" he had kept in his inner pocket all this time.

"That explains all of that, but..."

A smile with a faintly dangerous edge appeared on Rize Kamishiro's face. "What's the story behind those two girls' scents?"