:re Chapter 159

From a floating ledge of the shrine, Kaneki and Rize take in an imagined vista of ocean and green. Rize stands tall while Kaneki lies on his side, sunk in grief. She recalls being crushed under steel beams and watches the people they killed drop into the sea, remarking that within these bounds neither of them need ever fear hunger, though Kaneki refuses to look. She then speaks of her time in the Sunlit Garden, where she was raised as a seedbed. Because her blood was that of a pure ghoul, she was deemed inferior; the more human blood one carried, the higher one's standing. Facing a future as a vessel meant only to bear children, she fled, and in the end was cut apart and sealed into small coffins that became the Oggai.

Kaneki asks whether the kakuhou he consumed all came from Rize, acknowledging that his eating them cost many lives and that he never foresaw such an outcome. Rize rebukes him, saying feigned ignorance cannot excuse the killing and regret cannot undo it, since blood is bound to spill whenever he fights. She keeps prodding his motives until he confesses his real drive: the wish to be needed by someone. Rize likens him to herself, both of them trampling everything around them for their own ends. Recalling their reunion, she notes he claimed never to have hated her, and admits that she despised him because meeting him led to her wretched fate. Kaneki replies that despite all his suffering, their meeting let him do remarkable things and cross paths with people he was glad to know, and he ends the exchange by saying he was happy. At that, the sky rips apart and people begin to rain down. In an earlier moment, as Kaneki swam the ocean, Rize asked if he meant to look away from his sins, and he answered that he would try to carry them, while she mused that watching him drown would be entertaining.

The single-letter Japanese title S is read as Esu. Published on February 8, 2018 in Issue 2018-10 within Volume 15, the chapter lays out Rize's backstory in the Sunlit Garden and reframes her role as both victim and mirror to Kaneki.