Jack: Chapter 1

Much of the chapter is recounted in the first person by Arima's future partner, Taishi Fura. Word of a grisly killing spreads through the 13th Ward, where investigators sift through wrecked internal organs and signs of a kagune, vowing to catch the culprit and restore the CCG's standing. The narration hints that alongside humanity live flesh-eating predators known as ghouls.

At Seishin High School, Fura strolls late into math class. His teacher Ogata scolds him as he takes his seat, and he notes that his childhood friend Aki Sasada is absent yet again. When Fura asks the boy beside him, Kishou Arima, for a textbook, Arima lends his own, having already memorized the formula. Fura pegs Arima as insufferable, and after grabbing him by the shirt he is ordered out for disturbing a model student. Leaving the grounds, he catches radio reports about the so-called Lantern preying on the ward.

Out in the city, Aki and another friend, Ryou, flee police on a motorcycle as Fura watches. Later the bikers loiter under a shed talking about Fura while two of them fetch drinks. When those two take too long, the Lantern arrives clutching their severed heads. Fura shows up at the worst moment and is told to run; instead he swings a steel pole at the killer to no effect, and the ghoul's kagune impales both friends, killing Ryou and wounding Aki.

Overcome with rage, Fura charges the ghoul, only for Arima to yank him back and warn that acting alone means death. Arima then engages the killer and dismantles him with ease. When the investigator Itsuki Marude reaches the scene, Arima departs so calmly that Fura is bewildered, later enduring a round of Marude's questions. Shaken but fascinated, Fura resolves to confront Arima at school the next day.

Fura first crosses paths with Kishou Arima at Seishin High School. The Lantern serial killer murders Ryou and injures Aki, and Arima intervenes to defeat the ghoul before the investigator Itsuki Marude arrives. Fura's fascination with Arima takes root.

This is the debut chapter of the prequel Tokyo Ghoul: Jack, an eighty-page opener dated June 24, 2016 for its US release. The story is framed as Fura's personal recollection. Uruka Minami is credited under her Lantern alias despite not being identified in the narrative yet.