Louis cradled his left hand. His index and middle fingers had swollen up like sausages. Roughhousing with a ghoul really had been an unwise choice.
Ganshi sat farther away against the wall, hugging her knees. Her face was dark, and she seemed to be in an absolutely foul mood.
"All right, you got under my skin just now too, so we're even." Louis sighed. His right hand could barely move now, and he began resetting the bones throughout his body.
His self-healing ability was inferior to a ghoul's, so this sort of supplementary treatment would help him recover faster.
But halfway through, Louis realized that Ganshi had been silent this whole time, staring at him with a dark expression and an invisible air of murderous intent.
"You're not trying to figure out how to kill me in the most satisfying way, are you...?"
"..."
Louis sighed and stopped resetting his leg bones, lest they get broken again in a moment. "All right... let me tell you my story. I rarely tell anyone about it."
"You said before that you and I were alike... you meant the time I was homeless... but there's actually something else that makes us even more alike."
As Louis spoke, he formed a translucent crystal out of thin air, suspended it in midair, and moved it in front of Ganshi. "Do you know what this is?"
"Ice..." Ganshi's understanding of it seemed no different from anyone else's.
"It's a special ability... you're a writer, so you've probably heard of things like this. Where I used to live, a tiny number of people acquired all sorts of special abilities. Some were born with them, and others developed them later."
"But there, special abilities have been an ill omen since ancient times. People with them were practically seen