The V Organization

"One hundred thousand yen..." Louis looked at his new wallet.

The ghouls who worked at Anteiku were mainly there in exchange for food. Since Louis didn't need any special food, his wages at the café were paid entirely in yen.

Room and board, plus ten thousand yen a day. It was quite a generous wage.

Here, though, money didn't seem to be much use.

Perhaps because of the fight a few days earlier, the manager had allowed him to go out for a stroll after confirming that he could protect himself.

Louis looked at the busy street ahead of him and couldn't shake the feeling that he didn't belong.

And so, after barely taking a few steps outside, Louis returned to Anteiku.

"Back already?" Irimi Kyouko asked as she watched Louis walk into the café.

"Yeah... I don't feel like there's anywhere to go." Louis nodded, went back to his room to change into his waiter uniform, then returned to the café and tied on his apron.

"You're not on duty today, are you?" Irimi Kyouko asked as he finished tying his apron.

"I have to find something to do." Louis shrugged. "There's honor in work."

Kaneki was on leave, Touka was at school, and the manager and Koma had gone out to take care of some unknown business. Only Irimi and the Fueguchi mother and daughter were left in the café.

As for Yomo, he rarely appeared in the café. He seemed to be constantly running around gathering information.

"True. Maybe we could have Mr. Yomo introduce you to more people. Then you wouldn't be bored." Irimi Kyouko glanced around the café and beckoned Louis closer.

"Your movements are beautiful when you fight, but I get the feeling something's still missing. You could have Mr. Yomo train with you."

"He may be quiet all the time, but he's incredibly strong."

Irimi Kyouko had clearly heard about Yomo training Kaneki.

"Why don't you train me instead? I feel like you're strong too," Louis said, his gaze intent.

To his surprise, Irimi Kyouko merely smiled and waved him off. "I'm just a weak woman."

A weak woman who could cut him into eight pieces in a second...

"..."

If he had to rank the staff by combat strength, Louis would have put them in this order.

The manager > Renji Yomo > Enji Koma = Irimi Kyouko > Touka > him > Kaneki.

And when Kaneki went berserk, Louis might not even be a match for him...

Night was when ghouls became active, so many people began heading home around dusk, leaving the café mostly empty.

"Running the café alone really is a bit much. You've been a huge help to me." Irimi Kyouko stretched.

Just then, two men dressed as butlers pushed the door open and walked in. The person they were supporting between them was none other than a completely unconscious Ken Kaneki.

"Servants from the Tsukiyama family?"

Louis clearly saw Irimi Kyouko frown.

"He was attacked. Our master saved him and asked us to bring him back."

"..."

Knowing what Shuu Tsukiyama was like, both of them understood what had happened.

They held a brief meeting over the incident.

They were genuinely surprised that Tsukiyama had let Kaneki go, but they also decided not to allow him too much contact with Kaneki anymore.

Having narrowly escaped death, Ken Kaneki nodded repeatedly.

But this also laid the groundwork for Tsukiyama to forcibly abduct Ken Kaneki later...

Life at Anteiku wasn't limited to things like that. Plenty of inconveniences cropped up in everyday life too.

For instance, whenever Louis was making something to eat in the kitchen and accidentally cut his finger, a few heads would appear like ghosts in the doorway.

Once, Irimi Kyouko had even hugged Louis and clamored for him to let her take a bite.

According to them, he smelled a little different from ordinary humans. If they sniffed carefully, there was a distinctive fragrance to him. That was why so many ghouls sniffed him when they got close.

That scared Louis so badly that he didn't dare go out for days, afraid he might catch a certain purple-haired gay man's attention.

Another thing worth mentioning was probably the manager. He went out every few days, and no one knew what he was doing. Of course, perhaps they simply weren't telling Louis.

Louis hadn't paid much attention at first. Then, one night, while he was training his abilities, he heard an angry rebuke from inside the café. Several walls muffled it, and only a faint trace of the voice reached his ears.

"Yoshimura, this is your final warning..."

It was an unfamiliar voice. If he hadn't misheard, those were the words it had spoken.

But who would dare give the manager a final warning?

Steeling himself, Louis opened his door and stopped the manager, who was about to return to his room.

"Manager, who was that?"

The manager looked at Louis, who had appeared so suddenly. He seemed to be considering something and didn't answer right away.

Louis simply kept looking at him.

"Come with me..." With a rare sigh, the manager motioned for Louis to follow him.

Conversations between ghouls always seemed to require coffee as an intermediary. The manager brought over a cup and set it on the table where they sat.

"Long ago, before Anteiku was founded, I belonged to an organization called V..."

As the manager spoke, the memories buried in Louis's mind began to awaken.

The manager hadn't held a particularly high position in the V Organization. He had merely been an elite enforcer among its lower ranks. Back then, all he thought about was completing his missions. Human or ghoul, anyone who was an enemy of V would be eliminated by him.

At the time, the manager's only pleasure was visiting a café during his time off to rest for a while.

"It was there that I met a human woman. Her name was Yuna."

It was the first time Louis had heard the manager speak that name.

The two had fallen in love. At first, neither knew the other's identity, but the truth couldn't stay hidden forever. Yuna soon discovered that he was a ghoul.

Yet Yuna still chose to stay with the manager, and she became pregnant.

Children conceived between ghouls and humans usually died in the womb, but theirs survived. Just as the two were still rejoicing, however, the V Organization discovered what had happened.

The V Organization would not permit such a thing and ordered Yoshimura to kill his wife, Yuna, and their daughter.

For the first time, the manager refused an order from the organization. As a result, they hunted him down, and Yuna was killed during the pursuit.

The flames of vengeance gradually stripped the manager of his reason. He entrusted his daughter, Eto, to his friend Yoshino, then went alone to face the V Organization.

After battle upon battle, the manager grew immensely powerful-so powerful that even the V Organization didn't dare move against him lightly.

But that was all. With his newfound strength, the manager also came to understand that he couldn't truly stand against the V Organization. Repeating the slaughter would accomplish nothing.

He fled...

But the V Organization didn't simply let him go. As they searched for his daughter, Eto, they continued to pressure him.

That was also why the manager didn't dare seek out his daughter himself and could only protect her from the shadows.

The manager didn't speak of what happened afterward, but Louis knew.

Eto was raised to adulthood, and her extraordinary talent allowed her to become an immensely powerful ghoul. She also founded an organization-Aogiri Tree.

Taken together, it seemed that the V Organization had never stopped pressuring the manager. Yet his strength kept them from acting rashly, and the two sides had spent all these years maneuvering against each other in the shadows.

As for what kind of organization V actually was, the manager didn't say. He seemed unwilling to let Louis know.

"I failed in my duty as a father. I've always felt that I let her down."

"Lou, I have a request. If you meet my daughter in the future, I hope you'll save her." The manager looked at Louis as he made his plea.

"Save her..." Louis immediately pictured a scene with a cross lodged in someone's neck and nearly spat out his coffee.

The battles in the later stages of this world were far too brutal. The pall of death was almost numbing.

"Manager... I'll do everything I can. But I also hope you'll promise me something." Looking at the kindness in the manager's face, Louis couldn't help speaking.

"You're very important to all of us, so please don't give up hope so easily."

Louis wanted to explain in more detail, but he was afraid of making the manager suspicious. He could only leave it at that, saying that in the future, the manager must promise him one thing.