Kana stood in the sterile, brightly lit examination room of the CCG headquarters, her red eyes scanning the walls as if trying to commit every detail to memory. The walls were an antiseptic white, broken only by silver instruments and glowing monitors displaying various charts and data streams. Arima stood silently to the side, his white trench coat unblemished, his expression unreadable as always. Across the room, Dr. Kanou poured over his findings, his fingers drumming against a clipboard in restless excitement.
Currently, a middle aged man was observing a machine that had digitized numbers popping up one after the other, continuously spitting out papers with line graphs.
This man was Doctor Akihiro Kanou, a CCG doctor who's known for his 'interesting' take and outlook on the medical field surrounding ghouls. Right now, he was seeing the results of the machine in front of him that tested Kana's blood sample.
"Fascinating," Kanou muttered, his voice tinged with a manic edge. "Absolutely fascinating. I've seen ghoul biology warp and twist in unimaginable ways, but you... Kana, you're not just an anomaly. You're the next step."
Kana tilted her head slightly, her expression unreadable. Her hands rested idly at her sides, but her mind was far from calm. She had never liked doctor's offices, always getting a bad feeling whenever she entered. Human or ghoul doctor, she didn't like neither one.
"Explain," she demanded, her voice sharp but steady.
Kanou smirked, his glasses reflecting the monitor's glow. "Your vectors—or should I say your esper abilities—are a result of unprecedented biological evolution. You see, your parents were both kakujas, rare and powerful ghouls with heavily mutated kagune. Their union was not just a blending of traits but a collision of possibilities. Your mother wielded an ukaku, and your father, a bikaku. Their DNA merged and evolved, somehow resulting in you. A creature with powers that transcend ordinary ghouls."
Kana's red eyes narrowed. "What's does esper mean?"
Kanou put down his clipboard turning to face Kana fully a wide grin plastered on, "Esper is a person who exhibits supernatural abilities that have to do with psionic powers. Psionic powers are are psychic abilities that allow a person to use their mind to produce a specific effect. The word 'esper' is derived from the word ESP which is basically just psionic abilities that have to do with the extraordinary capabilities of the mind. Although all of this was thought to be in the realm of science fiction, you proved it possible!"
Kana's face just dripped with boredom. She had zoned out halfway through the conversation anyway, and started daydreaming about all the different sweets she could stuff in her mouth. Oddly enough, she only just recently started craving sweet treats; this might have been the aftereffects of her vector's evolution but she didn't know for sure.
Arima took this moment of silence to finally join the conversation. "What is her RC count?"
Kana's ears twitched upon hearing the quiet nerd-man say something.
Kanou flipped through his notes, his grin widening. "Negative. A phenomenon I've only theorized about until now. Ghouls consume human flesh to maintain their RC cells, while kakuja ghouls develop their mutations by devouring other ghouls. But you... your body doesn't function on the same plane. Instead of storing RC cells, your biology inverts the process, breaking them down and converting them into energy that fuels your ESP."
Kana processed the information in silence, her mind racing through fragmented thoughts. Evolution? Negative RC count? She had always felt different, even among ghouls. Now, she had an answer—but it wasn't comforting.
Arima finally spoke, his voice calm yet cutting. "If she is evolution, how do we control it?"
Kanou's grin faltered for a moment before he composed himself. "Control? Oh, no, Arima. You don't control this. You guide it. Harness it."
"Guide me?" Kana scoffed, her voice laced with sarcasm. "I don't need guidance from anyone."
Kanou stepped closer, his excitement bubbling over. "Perhaps not. But imagine what you could accomplish if you embraced this potential. The vectors you wield—your ESP—is just the beginning."
Kana's gaze turned colder, her hair casting a shadow over her face. "And what happens when the CCG decides I'm too dangerous? What happens when I stop being your fascinating experiment and start being your problem?"
Arima's gaze flickered toward Kana, but his expression remained stoic. "That depends on you."
The room fell into a tense silence, broken only by the hum of machinery. Kana's hands twitched at her sides, her thoughts churning. She hated the way Kanou spoke about her as though she were a specimen in a jar, but even more, she hated the truth in his words. There was a power within her—one that terrified even herself.
"Now, Arima here called beforehand and told me that you also have some mind reading capability. Care to try it out?" Kanou was frantically shaking with anticipation of the possibilities of Kana's powers.
"I think that's enough doctor." Arima turned and left through the automatic doors without giving any more words to Dr. Kanou.
Kana started after him but stopped a few inches from the doctor. "I can tell that you covet my body and want to pick apart my skin and examine my blood so badly you can hardly resist the urge to try and kill me right now. But know this -" Kana's voiced dropped to a whisper, the air in the room seemed to drop several temperatures.
"If you so much as even think another thought like that in front of me, your head will be ripped off from your body in half a second. Now fuck off pervert." Her mood then completely changed as she gave a kind smile and wave, then jollily skipped out the automatic doors humming a tune.
Kanou however, did not seem to affected by this threat - just picking back up his clipboard and continuing writing down observations from Kana's now processed blood sample.
***
"Lets go get some sweets Arima-senpai!" Kana tried her best to put on the best cut little sister voice she could muster, but it just ended up sounding like an old lady trying to appear adorable and dainty for a much younger suiter.
"No, we have somewhere to go before you can spend your time leisurely." Arima kept talking while speeding up his walking pace in the hallway.
On the way to their mysterious destination, Kana saw a tall, well-built man with dark hair and little orange streaks. He was followed by a group of people constantly bothering him with questions and updates about ghouls. The man made brief eye-contact with Arima before quickly passing him.
"Who was that?"
"Can you not just read my mind and be able know?"
Kana began to wonder if she had somehow struck a nerve.
"That was an old friend of mine. But we haven't spoken in years. We've simply grown apart." Despite saying this, a faint smile tugged at the corner of lips betraying his emotionless tone.
'I didn't take Arima-senpai for the type. I just assumed he wouldn't be able to find companionship with a nice looking girl seeing his stone-cold personality, but I didn't expect...'
"kukukukuku"
A muffled giggle was let out behind Arima though Kana had made an effort to suppress it.
He just ignored it.
Covering her mouth giggling with her eyes closed, Kana walked straight into Arima's back. It felt like running into a titanium wall.
'What does this man eat?'
"Hey why'd you stop!" She clumsily hopped on his shoulder to take a look at what was ahead of him, tilting his glasses off of his face in the process.
"We're here."