:re Chapter 79

As Saeki hauls him toward a new spot, Mutsuki regrets ever imagining he could relate to a ghoul this deranged. Spotting scissors on Saeki's belt, he panics and struggles, only for Saeki to smash his head against a rock and knock him out, saying that revealing their destination would defeat the purpose. Sinking into memory, Mutsuki watches himself butcher his entire family, unable to accept it, having always blamed ghouls for their deaths even as investigators once told him he was the killer he had since forgotten being.

He relives skinning a cat alive under Goumasa Tokage's encouragement at the Academy, then being accused by the staff, who called him a liar and mocked him over his family. Weeping, he digs up the jarred remains of the cat and insists to himself that he did not do it. At the auction he sees himself devouring a dead investigator. When the floor gives way beneath him and he falls into darkness, he brands himself grotesque and decides he should simply let Torso end his life.

Regaining awareness, Mutsuki finds his limbs restored inside the cave and hurls away a severed hand he had been clutching. He then spots Saeki mutilated in the chair he had occupied, and recalls that Saeki had surprised him with a trip to a flower field before beheading the ghoul. Overwhelmed by everything he has done, Mutsuki bursts into wild laughter. Urie later finds the corpse propped up and wonders where Mutsuki went, only to be radioed that a Special Class investigator has died. A report from second class Shigeru Yamakita catalogs the extreme mutilation inflicted on Saeki, whose head, limbs, and eyes were destroyed and whose remains were desecrated in gruesome fashion.

Mutsuki confronts the buried truth that he murdered his own family and committed other atrocities, including killing a cat under Tokage's influence and eating an investigator. He wakes with his limbs restored, discovers he has slain and mutilated Karao Saeki, and dissolves into laughter. Yamakita's report documents Torso's death and the savage condition of the body.

The chapter marks a turning point in Mutsuki's unraveling, reframing his self-image around the violence he had repressed. Saeki, long known as Torso, is confirmed dead here, killed by the captive he had tormented.